Word: mullah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stage of the war may have been prompted by a tidy piece of intelligence work. On Friday morning, Pakistani intelligence sources tell TIME, the Taliban eminence Mullah Mohammed Omar arrived in Kandahar, the regime's stronghold in southern Afghanistan. He had spent days holed up in a mountain fortress ducking U.S. bombs, and in the meantime his regime had been pummeled. When he got back to Kandahar, Omar fired two faithless deputies and passed the word that he would deliver the noon sermon at the Halqa Cherif mosque. The mosque houses a robe said to have belonged to the Prophet...
...this campaign have been no big secret--decapitate the Taliban, eliminate al-Qaeda's terror apparatus and seize Osama bin Laden. Administration insiders call the strategy "Taliban plinking" (echoing the "tank plinking" of the Gulf War): special forces plan to pick off one individual at a time, starting with Mullah Omar and working down the command chain of Taliban leaders protecting bin Laden. The first wave of lightning special-ops strikes was, as much as anything else, a psychological weapon designed to boost American spirits and faith in the government, silence suspicions that the public might go wobbly after seeing...
...Taliban's case, moderate doesn't mean enlightened--or powerful. For the most part, all Taliban members still support the idea of a pure Islamic state, though some are willing to allow slightly fewer restrictions on women's education and travel, as well as on the treatment of minorities. Mullah Mohammad Hasan Rahmani, the soft-spoken, one-legged Governor of Kandahar, and military commander Ibrahim Baloch signal their brand of open-mindedness by giving TV interviews or meeting with female journalists...
...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...
...brushed aside the dust on the Afghan rug on which we sat. The weave was exquisite. (After six weeks in carpetland you start noticing these things.) Oh, yes - this merchant is also a friend of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. "Before it might have been possible for America to negotiate with Mullah Omar over Osama bin Laden - but not now," he says. "Mullah Omar watched his son dying in a Kandahar hospital after a U.S. bombing raid. These things are not so easily forgiven...