Word: mullah
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...different take on the future of Kabul's despotic clerics. And though much of the gossip about what is happening in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan--mass defections of soldiers, for instance--is just gossip, there are signs of weakness, hints that the tight core of men around Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are at the very least anxious about what may be coming their way. Their announcement on Saturday morning, for instance, that they would consider releasing eight Christian missionaries held on charges of spreading religious doctrine, seemed to some a slight tremble of nerves. "If [the U.S.] stops issuing...
...Chaman border, tribal leader Achakzai listens to a village cleric oozing messianic praise of the Taliban. When the mullah gathers his robes and exits from the dark, carpeted room into a courtyard of flies and the blinding white light of the desert, Achakzai says with a grin: "Once the Taliban falls, that mullah will be cheering the return of Zahir Shah." Loyalty is something the Taliban can no longer count on among all its fellow tribesmen...
...Taliban has at least 4,000 hardened fighters in the city, Saif says. Their commander is Mullah Obaidullah, the Defense Minister. Obaidullah is a formidable adversary, says Mohammed Aref, chief of staff of a regiment on the front line facing Kabul. Officials and soldiers on this side who are in contact with the Taliban--spies, escapees or front-line officers who sometimes talk to their opponents by radio--say their enemy's morale is higher than Northern Alliance spokesmen would like to believe. The Taliban reaction to the attacks in the U.S. was a mixture of jubilation and fatalism, Northern...
...along the Kabul front, Taliban fighters repeat the same line with apparent conviction: they are fighting for two great champions of Islam--Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. During a radio exchange on a front west of Kabul, a local Taliban commander told Khademudin, his childhood playmate and now the enemy commander in the area, that "bin Laden is a guest of Afghanistan who has sacrificed much for the country." Khan Jan recalls a recent radio address by Mullah Omar. "If we die, that is fine," the mullah said, "but we will never give him up." A Northern Alliance security...
...Afghanistan, which he has praised as "among the keenest to fulfill [Allah's] laws." Bin Laden may imagine himself to be a potential new caliph. One of the titles he uses is "emir," which means ruler. However, he swears allegiance to (and thereby ranks himself below) the Taliban ruler, Mullah Mohammed Omar, so whatever political ambitions bin Laden may have are not yet on display...