Word: mountainous
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...wedding party, Saifullah visited the local base of the special forces. "We told the soldiers that these are good people--don't bomb them." As proof of loyalty, Saifullah pledged hundreds of his men to help the special forces hunt down al-Qaeda and Taliban bands spotted in a mountain region known as Armat Zadran, near the Pakistan border. The message got across: Gardez townsfolk rebelled against Pacha Khan last month, ousting him as governor. American warplanes circled but did not intervene...
...chugged through the frigid air. They were on their way from Bagram air base, north of Kabul, to Shah-i-Kot and the most intense battle so far of the Afghan war. A force that would eventually grow to more than 1,000 Americans, drawn mainly from the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne divisions, together with Afghan militias and about 200 special forces from allied nations, was engaged with perhaps 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters?four times as many enemy men as the U.S. had expected. The battlefield spread over 18 sq. km, at altitudes that ranged from...
...suicide mission unless they thought their leaders were trapped. American forces believe they have identified one "high-value target" in the valley, distinguished by the extent of his protection. Sardar Khan Zadran, a local commander, told TIME that last Wednesday, at a checkpoint on a mountain road leading to Khost, American-trained Afghan militiamen frisked two tribesmen and found an audiotape of bin Laden, some photographs of him, a letter detailing al-Qaeda operations in Afghanistan and a list of local chieftains who are taking bribes. The tape was whisked off to Bagram for analysis. Does Khan think bin Laden...
...More friends, certainly, than U.S. intelligence had detected. "The picture intel painted," says Sergeant Major Frank Grippe of the 10th Mountain Division, who took shrapnel wounds in his legs on the first day, "was just a little bit different from events happening on the ground." That's a soldier's understatement. As they prepared at Bagram, U.S. forces were told to ready themselves to meet from 150 to 200 of the enemy. After less than a week of battle, the Pentagon was already claiming they had killed around 500, and the fighting still wasn't over. What had gone wrong...
...attack Mansoor expected finally came on Saturday morning, March 2, after being postponed for 48 hours because of bad weather. At Bagram, Colonel Frank Wiercinski told his men that this would be a "defining moment" in their lives. Echoing the motto of the 10th Mountain Division, he said, "This is your climb to glory." The helicopters took off and flew south. The division, heading for battle position Eve, attacked the villages of Sarkhankhel, Marzak and Babakul, taking al-Qaeda by surprise. "The bad guys were drinking tea when we arrived," says Hagenbeck. "Our snipers," says one soldier, "whacked a whole...