Word: khost
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...emerging anti-American agitation among Pashtuns is confirmed by the appearance of leaflets called "shabnamas" (night-letters) in Afghan cities such as Kandahar and Jalalabad and in various parts of Khost and Paktia provinces. The authors proclaim "jihad" against foreign troops and urge Afghans to evict the "occupation forces." Some express support for Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar, and also threaten serious consequences for Afghans cooperating with...
...involving ourselves in internecine politics," insists Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, "including politics backed by guns." So why did U.S. aircraft recently conduct two bombing missions outside the eastern city of Khost, aimed at militias opposed to Afghanistan's interim leader Hamid Karzai? In an interview, General Tommy Franks, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, told TIME that the bombings were a response to attacks on American forces. As Franks put it, there were some "bad guys" in the region. When friendly Afghan forces conducted a sweep, they were attacked. "Then our people went with them...
There may be more to it than that. A Western diplomat in Kabul says intelligence reports indicate that Iranian agents have been seen around Khost--far to the east of where they were thought to have been most active--buying off tribal commanders in a deliberate effort to undermine Karzai. That's why the Americans thought there were "bad guys" in the region. But nobody supposes that Karzai can demand the application of American force against his rivals whenever he feels like it. "We keep telling [the government], 'Don't cry wolf,'" says a European official in Kabul. "They...
...clear from the testimony of witnesses and officials of the new government that the ruling clerics systematically abducted women from the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other ethnic minorities they defeated. Stolen women were a reward for victorious battle. And in the cities of Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Khost, women victims tell of being forced to wed Taliban soldiers and Pakistani and Arab fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, who later abandoned them. These marriages were tantamount to legalized rape. "They sold these girls," says Ahmad Jan, the Kabul police chief. "The girls were dishonored...
...from the Pakistan border. There, according to eyewitnesses, the women were penned up inside Sar Shahi camp in the desert. The more desirable among them were selected and taken away. Some were trucked to Peshawar with the apparent complicity of Pakistani border guards. Others were taken to Khost, where bin Laden had several training camps. The al-Qaeda Arabs had a hard time finding voluntary brides among the Afghan women, but they did have money. One Arab in Khost spent $10,000 on a teenage Afghan beauty, says Ahmad Jan, but abandoned her a week later, when...