Word: kandahar
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...blank. Pentagon list keepers say only three of the 20 men on the al-Qaeda list are thought to be dead; perhaps 12 of those on the Taliban list have been killed or wounded or have defected. On Saturday came word that the Taliban governor of Kandahar and a dozen of his commanders could be marked KIA, after a U.S. bomb took them out in a village outside the city...
...Revving up the manhunt should get a bit easier. Opposition forces closed in on the Taliban's last stronghold at Kandahar last week. U.S. Marines were deployed on Afghan soil to seal off avenues of retreat. The fall of Kandahar?whether by surrender or defeat?will peel away the terrorists' last major base of support. But it still won't be enough to put an X through all the names on Tommy Franks' lists...
...dust hung over the city, kicked up by U.S. strikes. American special-ops forces joined the anti-Taliban forces commanded by Karzai and Ghul Agha Sherzai, and the merged units closed in on the city from the east and north. Sherzai's 700 men advanced as far as the Kandahar airport before encountering fire from Taliban and foreign Arab fighters making their last stand. During bombing lulls, Taliban soldiers hauled their dead comrades out of the trenches before ushering in new fighters. Those trying to run away were shot in the legs by their commanders...
...Wednesday the Taliban negotiators secretly approached Karzai again; they wanted amnesty for Taliban fighters in exchange for surrender. "Maybe they thought that because I was named Prime Minister, they had lost legitimacy," Karzai told TIME. "Or it could have been my arrival on the outskirts of Kandahar, or maybe common sense. They knew they were finished." As Karzai waited for Taliban Defense Minister Obaidullah Akhund and Interior Minister Abdul Razaq to meet him at his desert base, he was nearly killed by an errant American bomb that killed three U.S. commandos. Karzai steadied himself and held two days of talks...
...Taliban sources told TIME that Omar "resisted handover until the end"--until his commanders turned against him--and then vanished. The bulk of the Afghan Taliban fled in the middle of the night to avoid reprisals by the tribal elders who immediately carved up the city. On liberation day Kandahar was as chaotic as it was joyous. Non-Taliban forces led by Mullah Naqib Ullah, an Omar backer and member of the Alokzai tribe who was handed control of part of the city, skirmished with men loyal to Sherzai trying to grab their share. Meanwhile, the Pentagon said, anywhere from...