Free Republic

(Reuters) - Taliban fighters attacked part of a U.S. military outpost in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar on Monday, officials said, less than a week after targeting a Polish base in a nearby province. Attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians have also mounted this week killing dozens and adding to fears the drawdown of foreign troops, most of whom are due to leave the country by the end of next year, is allowing insurgents to regain lost territory. "In a parking lot used by Americans there was a huge blast and after that a massive attack... A number...

The Tora Bora cave complex, an entrenched network of caves and tunnels carved into the Safed Koh mountain range on the Nangarhar-Pakistan border, sustained a withering barrage of Coalition air strikes over the last 24 hours. A band of ‘Arab, Chechen and Pakistani’ militants numbering close to 300 allegedly reoccupied the infamous mountain redoubt earlier last month. The group is thought to be loyal to the late Yonuis Kahlis’s son, Anwar ul-Haq Mujahid who leads a Taliban splinter group called Tora Bora Nizami Mahaz, or the Tora Bora Military Front (TBMF). The fortified positions and close proximity to Pakistan’s...

American soldiers kill a kamikaze in the east of Afghanistan JALALABAD (Afghanistan) - American soldiers cut down Wednesday the driver of a booby-trapped car which tried to slip into their convoy in the east of Afghanistan, one learned near the Afghan and American authorities. The American army, questioned in Kabul, indicated that the bomb did not make casualties and caused only minor property damages. "the American forces cut down the driver of a jeep which tried to slip into their convoy. After the American troops opened fire, the car exploded "and the driver was killed, declared with AFP Abdul...

JALALABAD AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, March 29, 2006 – Hundreds of people gathered March 25 to celebrate the renovation of Agam High School in the Pachir wa Agam district in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province. Sayeed Rahman, sub-governor of Pachir wa Agam district in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province, cuts the ribbon at the reopening ceremony of Agam High School on March 25. At left is Marine Capt. Bart Battista, commander of B Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. Behind him is Army Maj. Dennis C. Edwards, the battalion civil affairs officer. At right is Nu Salaam, the president of Agam High School. Photo by...

War brutalizes man, every afghan bears living testimony to this. If the landscape of Afghanistan bears the craters of the endless war, the political and military leadership in Afghanistan also carries war's indelible scars. It is important never to lose sight of this. Ahmed Shah Mas'ud was born to an army family in 1953 in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul. His father was a colonel in the Afghan Army and enrolled his son at Kabul's Lycee Istiqlal High School. Upon graduation Mas'ud joined Kabul's Polytechnic Institute. In 1973 King Zahir Shah was deposed and exiled by...