Word: khost
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...kept surfacing in connection with various plots by Islamic terrorist Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, now serving a life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing in New York City. Both Yousef and Abu Sayyaf founder Janjalani may have received training in the early 1990s at a commando camp near Khost, in Afghanistan. It was run by a professor of Islam Abdur Rab Rasul Sayyaf, whose belief in the strict Wahabi interpretation of Islam found him favor with many wealthy Saudis, including Osama bin Laden, No. 1 on America's list of most dangerous terrorists...
...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...
...says, it is time for the U.S. to cough up some funds. "If they don't our soldiers will disappear and al-Qaeda will come back," he warns. But Pachakhan certainly will not give up that easily. In Khost, counter-terror operations are an extension of local politics. Pachakhan is hunting down al-Qaeda in his region to "protect our family and friends," says his brother-minister, Amanullah. A top al-Qaeda leader in the area, the brothers claim, is old rival Jamaludin Haqqani, a former mujahedin in Soviet times and later a Taliban minister, who squeezed the royalists...