Word: mazar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...operations to commando raids, the job of inflicting those casualties lies with the Northern Alliance. Alliance commanders have provided their strategy for toppling the regime to anyone who will listen: once American bombs softened Taliban forces, the Alliance planned to make its move into the key northern outposts of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and Taliqan, cutting a swath through the heart of Taliban country. As the Alliance rolled back the Taliban in the north, the thinking went, the certainty of defeat would produce mass defections from the Taliban's ranks, and the regime would implode...
Time for Plan B. The first major ground battle, near Mazar-i-Sharif, took place last Monday, when hundreds of Northern Alliance troops serving under two commanders, Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum and Tajik general Mullah Ustad Mohammed Atta, swept toward the city and the 20,000 entrenched Taliban troops protecting it. The Alliance forces advanced to within 12 miles of Mazar, but a fierce Taliban counterattack led to savage street battles; Alliance forces managed to hold their front line but failed to advance much further. It's unlikely that the Alliance will march on Mazar anytime soon. The Taliban...
...have for the first time was heavy U.S. bombs dumped onto Taliban front lines. But those strikes were still measured, and Alliance frustration is growing. "The longer you wait, the more the Taliban can figure out how to continue life with constant air strikes," says a cavalry commander near Mazar...
...brigade members are fervently committed to bin Laden's cause, and will literally fight to the death. "They give no quarter, and they expect no quarter," says an official at the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. At the moment, they're helping out at key strategic northern cities like Mazar-i-Sharif, Taloqan and Jalalabad --and, not surprisingly, becoming a major target of U.S. firepower...
Early last week, Mullah Ustad Mohammed Atta seemed certain, murderously so, that Northern Alliance forces would take Mazar-i-Sharif, a strategically crucial city in northern Afghanistan that has been the site of numerous bloody incursions over the past decade. It didn't matter that the Taliban had more men and more weapons there; Atta insisted that its morale was low and dropping by the minute, and that it was only a matter of time before defectors began spilling out. The 37-year-old commander had already led a premature and decidedly ill-conceived raid on Oct. 16, during which...