Word: kabul
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...Just a few minutes before we hit the checkpoint, Ali had received a phone call from a friend. A British woman, Gayle Williams, had been shot dead in Kabul that morning while walking to work at a Christian charity helping the handicapped. Her assassins were two men on a motorbike, whose bullets hit her in the neck, chest and thigh. Later that afternoon, Ali spoke with Zaibullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, who claimed responsibility: "It was our mujahedin who killed [this] woman who was inviting Afghans to Christianity. She was under suspicion, so we investigated, and after our investigation...
...didn't know Williams, but the head of her organization, Serve Afghanistan, described her as a "lovely girl, a great adventurer." Williams' death hung heavy in our thoughts as Ali and I wound our way through the steep mountain pass that is the only road east out of Kabul, alongside which lie the rusting hulks of Soviet-era tanks. Today, those are joined by the newer wreckage of a pair of burned long-haul trucks that were attacked by the Taliban just a month ago. The drivers, say the Taliban, were carrying goods for the U.S. Army...
...Only once we returned to Kabul a few hours later did Ali confess that he had been terrified for the duration of our drive. He kept looking in the rearview mirror, he said, wary of any unusual activity on the road or men in the mountains with weapons...
...fear gnaws at us all, and we start to wonder what risks are acceptable in the pursuit of a story. My decision to visit Sarobi, north of Kabul, began to feel a bit foolish. Since I first started coming to Afghanistan in 2003, I have driven this road scores of times. The same with the road west, to Kandahar, and south, to Khost. These days the roads are all but off-limits, plagued by Taliban insurgents, war or rampant criminality that leaves no vehicle untouched. Kabul is encircled, say residents of the capital. While the city itself is safe, they...
...Sarobi that insurgents had killed 10 French troops in August, but after a few phone calls, Ali decided that Sarobi was probably the safest district we could visit to report on the security situation beyond the capital. Once we reached Sarobi, however, we realized that even Kabul's veneer of safety was just an illusion...