Word: shomali
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...sits in an icy room with mud walls in a snowfield on the edge of Kabul. She wipes her tears with the edge of her grimy sweater as she recalls the day in August 1999 when the Taliban set fire to her home in the vineyards of the Shomali Plain and kidnapped her best friend, Nafiza. "The Taliban burst in with their guns and torches," says Shah Jan. "None of us even had time to put on our veils...
...Allah Mahmad is an example of the human cement that holds together the opposition Northern Alliance. In other times he would have been a farmer, working in the lush wheat fields and fruit orchards of the Shomali Plain around Bagram. Instead, at 27, he has seen six years of combat. With his high-set cheekbones, goatee, checked shawl and round woolen cap he bears a passing resemblance to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the assassinated commander who assembled these forces. In a conventional army Allah Mahmad would be a captain. Here he's called commander, a hard-earned rank denoting his seniority...
...When it does Allah Mahmad expects to advance quickly on Kabul. "Just days," he says. His men will be reinforced by the thousands of troops that have been massing in the Panjshir Valley and the northern end of the Shomali Plain. But the Taliban and its Arab and Pakistani allies have also been reinforcing their front lines, digging new bunkers within sight of the 40th Division base. How many of Allah Mahmad's men die in the impending offensive hinges on whether, in the coming days, American bombing increases its intensity and moves closer to the lines...
...Rabbani's 300-man assault battalion is just one of the Northern Alliance units moving toward the Shomali Plain, north of Kabul, as opposition troops mass in preparation for a final offensive against the Taliban. In Jabal-us-Seraj, an opposition-held town 47 miles north of the capital, the narrow streets are clogged with irregulars arriving from Northern Alliance garrisons across the northeast. Distant explosions light the night sky to the south of Jabal-us-Seraj?U.S. air strikes that have bolstered the confidence of these men. "Since the beginning of the American attacks, there have been no Taliban...
...from Iran and Russia must follow one of two treacherous supply routes. The first is a limited airlift: a handful of Mi-17 transport helicopters that load up at supply dumps in Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, then fly across the towering Hindu Kush range to the Panjshir Valley and Shomali Plain. But last week bad weather and low visibility grounded those choppers. The other supply line is a rock-strewn mountain track that winds for more than 150 miles from Afghanistan's northern border through the heart of the Hindu Kush, crossing the 13,000-ft. Anjuman Pass into...