Word: kandahar
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...detonated explosives in several Afghan cities. They have ambushed American and Afghan troops and torched newly rebuilt schools. During the last week of June, Taliban combatants temporarily seized government offices in a remote part of Zabul province. On June 30 a Taliban operative planted an antipersonnel mine in a Kandahar mosque run by a pro-government cleric; the subsequent blast wounded 17 worshipers. The next day, an anti-Taliban mullah was killed by a shot to the head...
...year ago, notes Masood Khalili, once a leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance and now Afghanistan's ambassador to India, "the Taliban were scared, broken and disconcerted. Now they are forming again, slowly, gradually, like a photograph developing." The big picture, according to Kandahar's police chief Brigadier General Mohammed Akram, is that "the Taliban are stronger now than at any time since the fall of their government." These neo-Taliban number in the "thousands," according to an Afghan security official in Kabul. They operate primarily out of Pakistan, guided by many of the same men?including supreme leader...
...Mamabaidullah's office overlooks one of this battle's front lines: Spin Boldak's main border checkpoint, a notorious smugglers' route from the Pakistani town of Chaman. Entering or leaving the country often requires no papers at all. "It's impossible to control," says Khalid Pashtoon, spokesman for Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai. It's also the Taliban's gateway to revenge. Following their ouster from Afghanistan, most Taliban leaders found sanctuary among fellow ethnic Pashtuns in Pakistan's lawless Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province (N.W.F.P.) regions. Pakistani authorities have arrested nearly 500 suspected al-Qaeda members, but Karzai...
...Samira Makhmalbaf's filmmaking father, Mohsen Makhmalbaf?who directed the superb, Afghan-set Kandahar (2001)?helped finance Sedigh Barmak's Osama, the hit of the Directors' Fortnight. Set in the early days of Taliban rule and based on a true story, it tells of an 11-year-old girl whose mother sends her out with a short haircut and long robes to find work as a "boy" and support the family. It's a reckless ruse, one with potentially fatal consequences. The girl is taken to the men-only prayer ritual, and attends instruction by a mullah in the proper...
...forces have struck back hard. Following a tip from a rebel captured near Kandahar, U.S. forces and their Afghan allies killed at least 20 suspected Taliban fighters at a base in the Haba mountains, according to Gul Agha Sherzai, the Kandahar governor. When a special-forces patrol came under fire in the Torghar mountains, air support was called in, and an estimated 40 Taliban fighters were pounded with 35,000 lbs. of explosives, according to a U.S. military spokesman. Afghan officials say many of these rebels are sneaking in from the Pakistani borderlands, which are off limits to U.S. troops...