Word: valleyful
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...Qaeda fighters gathered south of Kabul. Code-named Operation Anaconda, the battle plan aimed at this force was a hammer-and-anvil strategy. Friendly Afghans, assisted by U.S. special forces, would flush the enemy from the north and northwest toward three exits of the Shah-i-Kot valley, where American troops waited. To the south, battle positions Heather and Ginger were divided by a hill christened the Whale, while to the east, battle position Eve guarded escape routes over the high mountains to Pakistan. But after two days of fierce combat, the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were still...
...battle of Shah-i-Kot is over, but its lessons are that America's military commitment in Afghanistan may last longer, and be more extensive and dangerous than expected. U.S. and allied forces had by Wednesday secured control of the valley that had seen the biggest battle of the Afghan campaign, in which eight American soldiers and scores of enemy personnel died...
...Amazingly, the companies at the south of the valley did not suffer an American fatality that first day. Things went less well in the northwest, where a force of Afghans led by General Ziahuddin, accompanied by American special forces, was to enter the valley from Zurmat. Abdul Sabur, a young Afghan, had signed on with the Americans for $200 a month, plus a mountain parka, a new Kalashnikov assault rifle and the promise of meat at least once a day. The risks seemed worth it; Sabur's own commander had not paid him for months...
...Intense fighting continued through Tuesday and Wednesday. In the first five days of the battle, some 500 bombs and missiles were dropped on the valley. Gunships raked al-Qaeda positions, killing hundreds. "You could hear the AC-130 bombers circling above in the clouds, then this slow thud, thud, thud," said Marine Captain Jeff Pool. "Then these great showers of dust would rise up from the valley floor." By the weekend, snow and freezing rain returned, and American commanders had to decide whether to risk more casualties by going after those fighters?maybe 200 of them?still in the caves...
...refuse to bury their dead. She met Lei Yuanpu; he says some of his 29-year-old son's killers were set free by police after paying a bribe of nearly a thousand dollars. The son's uninterred coffin rests on a flax-covered hillside overlooking Lanshan's valley. She met Liang Fuxiu, who says one of her husband's murderers bribed his way out of jail. The husband's coffin sits aboveground in a field behind the couple's home. Anonymous villagers began slipping notes under Li's door with stories of police corruption. Most common were complaints that...