Word: northerners
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Reporting the humanitarian crisis in Northern Afghanistan, I have been begged by fathers to take their children, angrily led by the hand by a husband to see his wife lying unconscious from malnutrition, and, again and again, asked to explain why the aid isn't coming. On Monday the mere sight of my health reduced a 75-year-old man to tears. My translator and I have found we can only stay for an hour or so in a refugee camp before the crowd becomes hysterical with need. In every visit, there comes a point when it becomes too dangerous...
...there are divisions on the Northern Alliance side too. General Mohammed Daoud, a Tajik commander in charge of the Alliance forces to the East of the city was reportedly unhappy that Dostum was conducting negotiations in Mazar-i-Sharif, at the same time as he was talking to the Taliban from his headquarters in Taloqan. Long-running tensions between the Uzbek and Tajik factions of the Northern Alliance may become sharply exacerbated now that the Alliance is claiming control over large swathes of territory. And those divisions, too, could have played a role in prompting Thursday's advance on Kunduz...
...Despite bloodcurdling threats, Northern Alliance commanders had been somewhat reluctant to launch the promised frontal assault - Thursday's deadline was the third "final" ultimatum for the Taliban to surrender. But despite the fact that the Alliance has swept into Kabul and liberated half of the country, there hasn't, in fact, been a single pitched battle in this war. The Taliban's sequential withdrawals have for the most part spared the Alliance from having to fight street-to-street for control over any city. And the fundamentalist movement's demise has come about in large part because many...
...battlefield. It's easy to see why Washington would be skeptical of any deal allowing safe passage for any Taliban fighters. Further south, the Taliban have often simply retreated and dispersed, handing towns and regions over to relatively friendly local Pashtun mujahedeen commanders who share their hostility to the Northern Alliance, and in some instances even to the U.S. They've left behind their tanks and artillery, but those wouldn't be much use to an army waging a guerrilla war from the hills. And the presence of thousands of dispersed Taliban fighters all over southern Afghanistan increases the dangers...
...Afghanis themselves, the battle at Kunduz may be a critical moment shaping the post-Taliban order. The various factions of the Northern Alliance are due to meet Monday in Germany with the Pashtun mujahedeen commanders and others who have taken over much of the south, as part of a U.N. effort to broker agreement on a new government. A bloodbath at Kunduz, where some 30,000 mostly Pashtun civilians are reportedly trapped, may sour the atmosphere for Monday's talks. But if large numbers of Afghan Taliban surrender and ultimately find themselves joining with Alliance fighters in facing down...