Word: kandahar
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...imaginations have had to turn sinister in hopes of anticipating the enemy's next move. We have braced ourselves for the reports of burned children in Afghan hospitals, dead civilians on a Kandahar bus; we know more personally now about the horror of innocent casualties of war. We understand what the Defense Department video doesn't show us--that when soldiers go in on the ground, the caskets begin to come home. This is not the cold war, in which bluffing worked; it is not a land war over borders and ports, which ends with a newly drawn...
...Inside Kandahar, the Taliban presence was far more visible. Some drove Toyota pickup trucks with tinted windows, others were on motorcycles, rifles slung cross their backs. Markets and shops were open and well-stocked and the roadside kiosks were teeming with fresh pomegranates, for which Kandahar is famous. But there were few people. Bombing has been heavy here, forcing residents to either hole up or flee. The large middle-class neighborhood where Omar had his residence and headquarters looked and felt like a ghost town. The streets were empty. All the houses were locked, some with metal chains. "Anybody...
Shortly after lunch on a bright, cool day last week, I paid a local cabbie to take me to a Taliban military station and ammunition dump on the outskirts of Kandahar, the spiritual capital of the Taliban movement and, until the U.S. bombings began, the headquarters of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Midway there, we heard a series of small explosions followed by three or four loud blasts. A few thousand meters to our left, on the edges of the cantonment, the ground was spitting up dust and smoke, clouding...
...smoke climbed toward the sky, then returned to their customers. Vehicles passed, the drivers carrying on as if this were an everyday occurrence. In a nearby neighborhood, young boys flew kites and played in the street. There was no anger, fear or confusion. Just another day in Kandahar...
...crossed the border that morning from Pakistan. At the first Taliban checkpoint inside Afghanistan, in the town of Wesh, I thought I would be searched. But there was no sign of soldiers. A cab took me the 100 km to Kandahar, and the driver pointed out the empty spots where Taliban roadblocks had been before the bombing. Some traffic along the road flowed toward Kandahar?trucks laden with flour, rice and other food, and a single Russian-made Taliban tank?but for the most part, people were headed the other way. There were a few vehicles carrying tires and timber...