Word: mujahedin
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...alliance remained only in its shakedown stage, and many of its parts still seemed decorative. As of late last week, U.S. forces made up more than 60% of the coalition's 675,000 active personnel, among them deployments ranging from 36,000 crack Egyptian infantrymen down to some Afghan mujahedin guerrillas and 150 troops from Honduras. What the smaller land contingents -- as well as the token few warships sent by countries like Australia, Spain and Greece -- could accomplish that the alliance's core partners could not remained unanswered by the Pentagon. Even such a muscular U.S. ally as Italy, moreover...
Still, the Administration is not reconciled to cutting Pakistan off permanently. Islamabad is the main link to U.S.-supplied mujahedin guerrillas in Afghanistan and the contributor of 2,000 troops to the gulf buildup. Two weeks ago, State Department officials sounded out Congress on extending aid without certification until elections are held in Pakistan next week. Legislators refused to go along with a waiver...
...weapon, walking with the same tired swagger. It is from a distance that the reality of child soldiers appalls. Even people living close to the fighting find it easier to forget. Hamed Karzai, the urbane spokesman of the Afghan rebel government, spends most of his time mediating between rival mujahedin factions. Sipping tea in the Pakistan city of Peshawar, 40 miles from the Afghan border, he seems faintly amused at the notion of young boys fighting on the side of the rebels. He allows that there might be some children who take part in battle. "It is a game...
Journalists often depend on the goodwill of strangers. On assignment, Stanley and Nachtwey learned that Pakistani police were preventing foreigners from crossing the border into Afghanistan. Nachtwey began to grow a beard and donned guerrilla garb in order to pass through in a truck with a group of mujahedin. Stanley crawled into a burlap bag and hid among sacks filled with wheat. "On the one hand, I was scared," she recalls. "On the other hand, I felt absurd." On the way back, Stanley rode openly with the rebels, but dressed in a burka, a head-to-toe Muslim garment...
Henry, good-humored and alert, is not so very different from Akbar, the smart-alecky mujahedin boy who in the battle zone of Afghanistan grew closer to his comrades than to his father. In Henry's insular world, his homies are his only family. It is his enemies who keep changing. Despite designer sneakers and all the food he needs, Henry is far poorer than Akbar. He has no cause, no purpose to his fighting, no dream of redemption in another life...