Word: khans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...simplest measure of statehood, after all, is a monopoly of force in a sovereign territory. And two days of fierce fighting in the southeastern town of Gardez have shown the limits of Kabul's authority. When the shooting stopped, Thursday, the warlord appointed governor by Karzai, Padsha Khan Zadran, had been repelled from the city by forces loyal to rival warlord Saifullah...
...into the miasma of Afghanistan's impossible politics. Diplomats say an ambush of U.S. special forces earlier this month in the province of Khost, in which Green Beret Sergeant Nathan Chapman was killed, may have been in reprisal for the U.S.'s backing an unpopular local warlord there, Pacha Khan Zadran. Zadran has enemies within his own tribe, including one who claims to be Khost's new governor and whose 500 fighters captured part of Khost last week. Twice now, Zadran's foes say, he has called in U.S. air strikes on his enemies, claiming they were al-Qaeda...
...lugubrious names bestowed on the ruins refer to a few days of horror in 1222, when Genghis Khan's armies razed the city and massacred all its inhabitants as punishment for resistance. You can still find human bones here, says Nasir, my guide. The Taliban were great art looters as well as destroyers, it seems: they dug here for treasure and, in the process, brought human remains to the surface. To illustrate this, Nasir pokes around in an earthen bank with a stick, discarding bits of animal bones, and finally pulls out a human vertebra. The soldiers offer a more...
...Despite periodic vandalism, theft and iconoclasm, Bamiyan's Buddhas survived for nearly 18 centuries. Genghis Khan did not touch them?he was quite tolerant of other religions. The Shia Muslim Hazara who live in the valley protected them, and adherents of Sufi Islam, a mystical sect with a wide following in Afghanistan, see echoes of Buddhism in their own practices. But last March, Taliban commanders flew in by helicopter. A public meeting was called, and the main speaker, then-Defense Minister Obaidullah Akhund?who reportedly surrendered to the new government last week and was set free?read a decree...
...Pentagon officials insist that before U.S. planes attacked the convoy, it had fired surface-to-air missiles at them. But in both cases, there are suspicions that U.S. military targeters may have been deliberately provided with bad intelligence by supporters of a local warlord, Pacha Khan Zadran, who may have been using U.S. firepower to settle scores with his rivals in Paktia, a province he hopes to control as governor. "One competitor may be trying to use our capability for his own benefit," says Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff...