Word: khost
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There was nothing really wrong with the Taliban, says Haji Mangal, a small-time local commander in the city of Khost. They were "good people," he says, who got mixed up with the wrong company?international terrorists, that is. Such politically incorrect remarks would be hard to find in many parts of Afghanistan. But Khost has always been different...
...This is a land of independent, rebellious people and forbidding terrain, where foreigners are rarely welcome. The Soviets found this out in the 1980s when mujahedin?among them a volunteer named Osama bin Laden?made their life here hell. A group of U.S. special forces discovered Khost's dark side several weeks ago when it was ambushed in the city, suffering one dead and another injured. The attackers were either in the pay of the Governor's enemies?the official version?or were simply three angry, local brothers avenging relatives killed in U.S. bombing raids. The city reverberates at night...
...Qaeda fighters are either hiding in the surrounding mountains or slip back and forth across the Pakistan border, Afghan officials maintain. The new rulers of Khost are hosting and helping U.S. special forces, but their main concern is to restore their own power after decades in exile. They have made a good start. Seven brothers from the Zadran clan, aged from 17 to their late fifties, control the key positions of power in Khost and the whole of the two surrounding provinces of Paktia and Paktika. One brother, Amanullah Khan Zadran, looks after the family's affairs in Kabul where...
...government of Hamid Karzai in Kabul says it wants to put an end to rule by local magnates, yet in a series of quick-fix deals, it has put them in charge of places like Herat, Kandahar and Khost. In time, Karzai says, the local leaders will be replaced by professionals who are not part of local power structures. Anyone trying to do this in Khost could be in for a tough time. The brothers, fervent royalists, fly the royal banner from official buildings, not the current national flag, and pictures of deposed King Mohammed Zahir Shah adorn their cars...