Word: uzbek
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first cool nights of fall settled on northeast Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Massoud was barely hanging on. His summer offensive had been a bust. An attempt to capture the city of Taloqan, which he had lost to the Taliban in 2000, ended in failure. But old allies, like the brutal Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, had returned to the field, and Massoud still thought the unpopularity of the Taliban might yet make them vulnerable. "He was telling us not to worry, that we'd soon capture Kabul," says Shah Pacha, an infantry commander in the Northern Alliance...
Italian and U.S. officials last week fingered Tokhtakhounov, 53, a bull-headed Uzbek long linked with the Russian Mafia, as the mind behind the skating scandal at last winter's Salt Lake City Olympics, when tumble-down Russian pairs skaters Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze won gold over Jamie Sale and David Pelletier, the Canadian duo who gave a demonstrably superior performance. Now implicated in the mess are the gold-winning French ice-dance team of Russian-born Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat. Anissina and her mother are the two women believed to be caught on tape talking with Tokhtakhounov...
...conversations between Tokhtakhounov and a woman believed to be Anissina's mother Irina Chernieva--a former Olympic figure skater who strenuously promoted Marina's career--were startling if not downright incriminating. In one, the Uzbek promised, "We are going to make your daughter an Olympic champion. Even if she falls, we will make sure she is No. 1." In another, a Frenchman called Chevalier (presumably a cohort) is heard assuring the Uzbek, "Even if the Canadians are 10 times better, the French with their vote have given them [the Russians] first place. You understand...
...there's no question that Tokhtakhounov is something of a sport. In the '60s he played soccer for Pakhtakor, the Uzbek Republic's team. "It is true he has some friends who are athletes," said Saldarelli, "but only soccer players...
...most of the terrorists stayed in Pakistan. Many of them, especially the non-Arab Uzbeks, Chechens and Sudanese, operate like bandits in the tribal areas, where they raid U.S. outposts across the border. The militants have fiercely resisted Pakistani efforts to arrest them. On June 25, several hundred Pakistani paramilitaries raided a mud-walled fortress in the mountains of south Waziristan, a rifle shot away from the Afghan border. According to a Pakistani intelligence source, they had help from several CIA operatives, who picked out the Qaeda refuge with satellite photos and electronic eavesdropping. The Uzbek fugitives had heavy machine...