Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...quite such extremis. But we are in a situation of critical danger. Newly discovered documents in Kabul confirm that al-Qaeda was working on chemical and biological poisons, and the group was eagerly pursuing materials to build an atomic weapon. No one doubts bin Laden would use it. Taliban leader Mullah Omar declared last Thursday that his objective was the "extinction of America": "The plan is going ahead...this will happen within a short period of time; keep in mind this prediction...
Slowly, hesitantly, the four tanks and two armored fighting vehicles of the Northern Alliance's Guards Brigade rolled forward from their advance position 28 miles north of Kabul. It was last Monday afternoon, before the capital fell, and the crews were tensed for a barrage of enemy fire. But none came, so they pushed on faster, rumbling down narrow lanes in thick clouds of dust before turning onto the Old Road and heading south toward Kabul. This was once agricultural land, but now the landscape was lunar and blitzed: the remaining trees were shredded and the fields were pocked with...
...battle for Kabul lasted less than three hours. Just three days before, an optimistic Alliance commander had been predicting it would last two weeks. The fiercest fighting ran roughly from 1:30 until 3:30 Monday afternoon; then Taliban frontline defenses began to crumble. The battle took place 28 miles to the city's north, but Taliban commanders mounted no counterattack. Alliance sources reported having lost a grand total of 10 men. There was a variety of reasons for the rout. The intense American bombing of Taliban forward troops had been devastating. The rapid fall of Mazar-i-Sharif...
...Taliban ran. At 9 p.m., said Wakil Mir Agha, a local leader from a suburb near Kabul International Airport, he was on the roof of his house and heard Taliban soldiers saying Qarabagh had fallen. Soon after, he reported, they fled the city, joining some 8,000 Taliban and radical fighters. It was unclear whether the retreat had been ordered or was a result of panic. Said Jawed Hussein, 21, a Pakistani captured by the Alliance: "Everybody was running to save his own skin." Or driving. Abandoning tanks and heavy weapons, they stole an estimated 800 cars for their getaway...
Ranging from the mysterious to the chilling, documents and weapons found by TIME in visits to seven abandoned al-Qaeda safe houses in Kabul last week depict an organizationally and technically sophisticated apparatus. The discoveries--including detailed personnel records for fighters, crates of French-made MILAN antitank missiles and sketches illustrating the ideal place to hide a bomb on an airplane--may help authorities trace the terror network and thwart future attacks...