Word: mullah
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Taliban. (So far, there are few signs of mass defection.) But the other crucial factor shaping the political guidelines for the conduct of the war is the U.S. reliance on Pakistan, which is firmly opposed to the Northern Alliance taking Kabul. Islamabad, instead, wants to rehabilitate the Taliban, minus Mullah Omar and Bin Laden, and give it an important role in a new government - a prospect rejected by the Northern Alliance...
...lights falling through the sky," the commander told Alokzai. "The missiles have flashing yellow lights." That night, Alokzai counted 30 missiles striking targets around the city: "It was like Kandahar was covered in a floating green dust," he told TIME. Most of the Taliban fighters--including their supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar--had already left town, though a number of Omar's relatives are said to have been killed in the attacks. On Wednesday night a single missile was fired on the village of Sangesar, destroying the mosque where Omar started his movement in 1995. Even the war-hardened locals...
...biggest broadcast arm, Voice of America, has a mandate of objectivity--employees detest the term propaganda--and while it broadcasts into Afghanistan in several regional languages, its proselytizing is limited to the occasional editorial. The station came under criticism for airing excerpts of an interview with Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. VOA staff members counter that its independence lends it credibility. Director Robert Reilly told TIME, "It's important to appeal to people's reason. After listening to VOA, if they dislike us, they'll have better reasons for disliking us. And if they support us, they'll have better...
...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...