Word: mazar
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...commander around every mountain pass. Pilfering is rife; Alliance soldiers and local aid workers divert much of the food, medicine and blankets to their families or to bazaars. To speed up the deliveries, aid workers plan to have hundreds of French soldiers secure a "humanitarian corridor" from Uzbekistan to Mazar-i-Sharif. But the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan brings its own difficulties. When word of the French reached Mazar-i-Sharif's bazaar, young men ran to fetch their guns to fight the "invaders...
...will tell you he wept on Sept. 9, the day two al-Qaeda agents posing as journalists assassinated the rebel leader in a suicide bomb attack. In death, Massoud has become even more iconic than in life. His picture hangs in shop windows across the northern Afghan capital of Mazar-i-Sharif and is pasted in the windshields of Alliance pickups and jeeps. Along every street those calm, hooded eyes gaze out from their baggy sockets. He's the Che Guevara of northern Afghanistan, its Mandela, Marley, JFK. (Nearly anyone you ask can recall where he or she was when...
...much of that vision has been lost can be seen in Mazar-i-Sharif. When the Taliban abandoned Mazar and retreated to the south, they set the pattern for the ground war; so too, the way in which Mazar emerges from Taliban rule is a good indicator of how Afghanistan will fare at peace...
...Three commanders of different ethnic backgrounds have taken Mazar, and they are the city's key players for the foreseeable future. Two of the commanders, Ustad Mohammed Atta (of Tajik descent) and Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq (a member of the Hazara tribe), set themselves up in palatial villas in the city center. General Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, took over Kalai Jangi, an ancient mud-walled fortress to the southwest. In public, all three insist an alliance born of necessity is holding. They say they are cooperating in the primary task of emptying Mazar of armed men and establishing a joint security...
...history has proved, the dust never quite settles in Afghanistan. At night, the streets of Mazar aren't exactly safe; residents lock themselves in high-walled homes and the pop and crack of gunfire sounds across the city until dawn. Even in daytime, people tend to remain within their neighborhoods, which are lumped into three zones under the control of Dostum, Atta or Mohaqiq. The Hazaras catch most of the blame for the city's violence. In fact, they have most cause for revenge: when the Taliban took the city in 1998 they singled out Hazaras...