Word: kabul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...MORE STORIES Kabul: Eking out an Existence Baghran: Into Taliban Country Taliban: Why the bad guys get away More Stories >>> PHOTO ESSAYS Burden of Sanctuary Afghanistan's Women A Country Divided More Photos >>> CNN.com Asia Latest news on the War on Terror
...These teenage and twentysomething sons of local farming families have homes within half an hour's walk from the ruins they've defended since the Taliban first took this terrain north of Kabul in late 1996. Their generals talk of the war on global terrorism but war doesn't get much more local?or personal?than this. "The Taliban has burned our fields, cut down our trees, destroyed our homes," growls Allah Mahmad. "They're making refugees of us, but we're refugees who have not forgotten how to fight...
...gathering darkness, we stand staring out toward Talib lines. Save for the occasional crump of a mortar or burst of tracer fire the front is quiet. Then toward 7 p.m. the evening exodus begins. Since the start of U.S. air strikes against targets in Kabul, there has been a nightly parade of vehicles from the city. On what they call the New Road, in front of the base, convoys of trucks, pickups and armored vehicles cross a low pass, their headlights visible as they head toward villages behind the Bagram front...
...front lines they want more, much more, and they want it now. Staring through binoculars at the headlights cresting the pass, Allah Mahmad can hardly contain his frustration. "If the Americans hit the pass now, they'd cream the bastards," he mutters. "All the bloody terrorists move out of Kabul at night. Hitting the city isn't touching a hair on their heads...
...Khwaja has a powerful pair of lungs. "Hey, mullahs!" he bellows across no-man's land. "Ragheads! Have you said your prayers yet?" Out of the half-light come return salvos of insults and laughter. It's the beginning of another day in a war that, north of Kabul, has yet to begin...