Word: mazar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Twice in the past four years, Northern Alliance commander Rashid Dostum has had to flee Mazar-i-Sharif, the city he once ruled. Once he had to bribe his own men to let him out of town before the Taliban arrived. But last Friday Dostum re-entered the city in triumph. It was Mazar's latest--but perhaps not its last--reversal of fortune...
...have died there since 1997. But until then it was untouched by Afghanistan's two decades of war. The city takes its name from the Blue Mosque there, where Ali--Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth Caliph--is said to be buried. Alexander the Great slept in Mazar. Genghis Khan and Silk Road traders passed through. Only 35 miles from Uzbekistan's border, the city was a valuable supply depot for the Soviets, who left it in Dostum's hands...
...south of this ridge. The Alliance has some 5,000 troops along the 20-mile Taloqan front; estimates of Taliban strength range from 5,000 to 10,000, so the rebels are relying on U.S. bombing for advantage. The ultimate aim is to link up with troops who took Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday night and to advance on the Taliban stronghold of Kunduz, thus reclaiming the entire northern part of the country...
...Kunduz, the last government garrison in the north, and in Kandahar. Last week the Taliban was on the verge of quitting both cities, but defiant Taliban cadres made their stands. In the north, the estimated 6,000 Taliban troops who retreated to Kunduz from the decimated fronts at Mazar-i-Sharif and Taloqan had their supply lines and escape routes cut off. They had two options: surrender to the Uzbek and Tajik rebels or face death. As Taliban soldiers squabbled over whether to negotiate or fight--the Arabs arguing for the latter--U.S. B-52s on Saturday pulverized them while...
...Across Afghanistan, people deserted the regime as soon as it started losing, exposing its shallow hold on them. "The Taliban showed they were good at enforcing beard lengths," says a Western diplomat, "and that's about it." The first, pivotal defeat of the Taliban, in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was greased by local Pashtun fed up with taking orders from "these village idiots from the south," as a foreign aid worker put it. Those fighters cut a secret deal with Alliance commander Rashid Dostum to allow Dostum's cavalry to pour through the Taliban front line. After...