Word: mullah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...spring of 2001, Afghanistan was as rough a place as it ever is. Four sets of forces battled for position. Most of the country was under the authority of the Taliban, but it was not a homogeneous group. Some of its leaders, like Mullah Mohammed Omar, the self-styled emir of Afghanistan, were dyed-in-the-wool Islamic radicals; others were fierce Afghan nationalists. The Taliban's principal support had come from Pakistan--another interested party, which wanted a reasonably peaceful border to its west--and in particular from the hard men of the ISI. But Pakistan's policy...
...last spring, the uneasy equilibrium among the four forces was beginning to break down. "Moderates" in the Taliban--those who tried to keep lines open to intermediaries in the U.N. and the U.S.--were losing ground. In 2000, Mullah Mohammed Rabbani, thought to be the second most powerful member of the Taliban, had reached out clandestinely to Massoud. "He understood that our country had been sold out to al-Qaeda and Pakistan," says Ahmad Jamsheed, Massoud's secretary. But in April 2001, Rabbani died of liver cancer. By that month, says the U.N.'s Vendrell, "it was al-Qaeda that...
...Pakistanis were no longer able to moderate Taliban behavior. To worldwide condemnation, the Taliban had announced its intention to blow up the 1,700-year-old stone statues of the Buddha in the Bamiyan Valley. Musharraf dispatched his right-hand man, Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider, to plead with Mullah Omar for the Buddhas to be saved. The Taliban's Foreign Minister and its ambassador to Pakistan, says a Pakistani official close to the talks, were in favor of saving the Buddhas. But Mullah Omar, says a member of the Pakistani delegation, listened to what Haider had to say and replied...
...that raid, coalition forces can hardly count on friendly tips from the mountain folk of Uruzgan, Zabul, Helmand and Kandahar provinces to help them close in on Omar. Many there sympathize with Omar. "They are his friends, he is their leader, and he is also their guest," says Mullah Gul Akhund, a police commander in Kandahar. "They must protect him." Should those bonds prove feeble, the Taliban know how to drive home the consequences of treachery. In mid-June, Mullah Bradar was seen on horseback in Helmand province, in the mountains near Washir. About the same time, a "night letter...
...involved in Asia, the results have been ambiguous, at times shrouded in the confusion of a war with no clear objective or measure of victory. In Afghanistan, after a string of early victories, U.S. forces are still searching for traces of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Omar. To make matters worse, a whole lot of Afghans are howling for American scalps because of tragic collateral damage: innocent villagers killed in American raids...