Word: shahi
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Nobody's seen Mullah Omar lately, but the Taliban and their supporters have a new icon. Saifur Rahman Mansoor, the youthful commander of the Shahi Kot fortress, has emerged as something of a celebrity among anti-American elements in Afghanistan since his men downed a U.S. helicopter and killed seven American soldiers Monday...
...former President Burhanuddin Rabbani before being killed by political rivals in a 1993 car bombing, the young Mansoor joined the Taliban and served as deputy commander of the garrison at Kargha near Kabul until last November. Following the movement's collapse, Mansoor returned home and reactivated the base at Shahi Kot, which had served his father so well against the Soviets...
...Mansoor's mountain stronghold appears to have been a magnet for Taliban die-hards and al-Qaeda fighters, a number of whom made their way to Shahi Kot - some with the families in tow - to avoid capture by the U.S. and its allies. That had caused consternation among local tribal leaders already made edgy by a bloody, unrelated power struggle between rival warlords. Shortly before the battle at Shahi Kot began, Mansoor had reportedly been negotiating terms for his surrender with tribal elders sent by Taj Mohammed Wardak, the new governor of Paktia, the province where Shahi Kot is located...
...Pentagon believes there may be as many as 50 pockets of resistance like Shahi Kot left, and emphasizes that the campaign to eliminate remaining elements of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan will continue long after that place is cleared. It will be a hard, cave-to-cave fight that will probably mean more U.S. casualties. And the longer U.S. forces remain deployed, the greater the pressure will be to take on more of the "nation-building" responsibility the Bush administration has tried hard to avoid...
...America's attention may have moved on to talk of returning to battle in Iraq, but Shahi Kot is a reminder that the Afghan campaign is far from over. And that while technology will almost always sway the battlefield odds in favor of the U.S., there are no ground wars without casualties on both sides...