Word: warlord
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...special forces had a busy night on Jan. 24. A mile away, they attacked a second Uruzgan compound, which had been seized by rogue warlord Mohammed Yousif - a challenger for the title of district chief. At 2am helicopters landed nearby and soldiers stormed his perimeter. "A great noise woke me up," says the steely Yousif, "and when I got out of my room I could see Americans." He claims he ordered his men not to open fire, but "when I knew they were going to kill us and bombard, I escaped." Yousif and a small coterie of aides evaded...
...Taliban regime. "During the Taliban, he was at home, he was friends with the Talibs," says elder Farou Khan. Younis even give large numbers of fighters to the fanatical Islamic government. But, as Abdul Rauf's son tries to explain, "this was compulsory of every landlord". However this warlord did more than lend his soldiers; he allowed his son Mullah Ahmadullah to join the Taliban...
...like in many other regions in today's post-Taliban Afghanistan, the local political infighting often intersects with charges and counter-charges of Talib connections. Take warlord Mohammed Younis, for example. "He was saying he was chief of this district, he was saying this district is mine. He wanted to take it by force," says Uruzgan shura chairman Haji Sofi Mohammed Halim. Days before the U.S. attack, Younis had lost out in acrimonious local power struggle. But it may have been his possible links to very senior Taliban leaders that help explain the events at Uruzgan...
...potential for mayhem remains huge and, by some Army assessments, growing as Americans confront what General Tommy Franks, head of U.S. Central Command, estimates to be about a dozen ever shifting pockets of resistance. Those dangers are exacerbated as American forces are drawn into local feuds and warlord ambitions. As the double-bang plot against the embassy illustrates, it is the multiplicity of perils and the long list of suspects that make Afghanistan one of the world's biggest booby traps...
...slide into the miasma of Afghanistan's impossible politics. Diplomats say an ambush of U.S. special forces earlier this month in the province of Khost, in which Green Beret Sergeant Nathan Chapman was killed, may have been in reprisal for the U.S.'s backing an unpopular local warlord there, Pacha Khan Zadran. Zadran has enemies within his own tribe, including one who claims to be Khost's new governor and whose 500 fighters captured part of Khost last week. Twice now, Zadran's foes say, he has called in U.S. air strikes on his enemies, claiming they were al-Qaeda...