Word: kunduz
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Najibullah, a 10-year-old refugee from Taliban-controlled Kunduz province, lives crammed in a ragged tent with his parents and four siblings. Already, he knows how to fire a Kalashnikov from daily target practice with his family firearm. When he is older, he hopes to fire a rocket-propelled grenade. "I am small now," he says, squaring his tiny shoulders. "But I will be big when I shoot the Taliban who killed my aunt and uncle." By avenging their deaths, Najibullah is carrying on family custom. His father tracked down the Soviet platoon that killed relatives in the 1980s...
...support that helped the Alliance retake Mazar would make it extremely difficult for the Taliban forces to mass for a counterattack. Alliance commanders are hoping their allies along the way will stop the retreating Taliban reaching Kabul. Rather than defend its remaining northern outposts such as Kunduz and Taloqan in territory that, like Mazar-i-Sharif, is tribally and militarily hostile to the mostly Pashtun fundamentalist movement, the Taliban may instead concentrate its forces for a battle to hold on to the capital, where they have more support among the local population as well as thousands of reinforcements newly arrived...
...Mazar-i-Sharif. They now claim to be four miles south of the city, and are promising to capture it tomorrow (Thursday). The reason for their rapid advance, they say, is that the Taliban forces defending the city have abandoned Mazar, heading west to Herat and east to Kunduz...
...They still hold Herat, which is a long way from Mazar, and they'd have to move down along the Turkmenistan border to get there. But the Taliban are in a strong position at Herat. So that's one possible retreat. The more obvious choices are Taloqan and Kunduz. But if they're there and the road from Kabul to Mazar is cut, the Taliban forces there face being cut off, because many of the local commanders between them and Kabul may be bought...
...others, and they don't have anywhere to run and hide. They tend to be more extreme and ideologically committed, and they say their death prayers before they go into battle. People had been expecting them to stand to the last man at Mazar. If they go to Kunduz, they may simply be postponing that last stand. Unless they plan to surrender, which nobody is expecting...