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"Hurry hurry hurry. We can destroy the enemy. Advance." "Hit hit hit the Taliban." "Hit him hit him hit him. Fire, fire." "We're arriving in Khalakhan." "Take care about the troops." "The Taliban are surrendering." "Bring them to me." "One hundred of them are coming to you." "El Ham captured a pickup with their weapons." These were the voices on the radio of the Northern Alliance commanders we have been visiting for weeks. Several other journalists and I were standing with some Afghan soldiers on the roof of a command post--a mud house with a tank's turret and gun jutting ...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says his country's strategic partnership signed with India is not meant as an aggressive move against Pakistan. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai pose before a meeting in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. Karzai is on a two-day official visit to India.(AP Photo/Gurinder Osan) Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, right, and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, address the media after a signing of agreement meeting in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011.This is Karzai's second trip to India this year and comes just days after he accused neighboring Pakistan...

There's no question that the rebels Americans are currently fighting for in Libya include in their ranks jihadis who in recent years traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans. The only question is whether that worries you or not. Take Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, a leader of U.S.-supported rebels in the fighting for Adjabiya. His hometown, Darnah, has produced many jihadis, and after the Sept. 11 attacks al-Hasidi traveled to Afghanistan to fight the "foreign invasion" -- that is, the U.S. military. According to a report in Britain's Daily Telegraph, al-Hasidi says he was later captured in Pakistan, handed over to...

US military officials are holding a bodyguard of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at the naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Washington Post reports. The report cites Defence Department memos and sources familiar with base captives. The Post says the bodyguard is Moroccan Abdallah Tabarak, who enabled bin Laden to escape from the battle of Tora Bora in Afghanistan in late 2001 by making calls on his leader's personal satellite telephone. The information is contained in memos documenting meetings between military personnel and inspectors from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ICRC officials, who keep...

The secret war On the North-West Frontier, soldiers are trying to tighten the noose around bin Laden's forces. But in Europe and America, there is no clear enemy to fight - yet every expert knows that a terrorist atrocity is coming Mark Townsend in Tangier, John Hooper in Madrid, Greg Bearup in Peshawar, Paul Harris in Washington, Peter Beaumont in Baghdad, Antony Barnett, Martin Bright, Jason Burke and Nick Pelham in London Sunday March 21, 2004 The Observer There were shadows in the rocks. As the 12 US Special Forces soldiers arrived at a remote mountain region in eastern Afghanistan...

TRUTH in the David Hicks affair remains as elusive as ever after fresh allegations this week from inside the US military that the Guantanamo Bay commissions are so seriously flawed that a fair trial is impossible. The most damaging blows yet to the commissions -- still supported by the Howard Government -- came from three US Air Force prosecutors involved in the trials who have quit the investigation in protest. One, John Carr, said the process appeared to have been rigged and that the first four cases -- including Hicks -- had been been "handpicked" and would not be acquitted....

A missile fired by remote control from a pilotless CIA drone aircraft has hit what was believed to be a group of senior al Qaeda members in southeastern Afghanistan, killing at least one of them, a U.S. official said on Wednesday. "It was a CIA 'Predator' missile that was fired upon what was thought to be a senior al Qaeda official," said the official, who asked not to be identified. He said the attack took place on Monday night. "At least one was killed and possibly others. It's not clear who the individual was," the official said, adding that bad ...

Kabul, Nov 3 "I thought I was going to die — the earth was raining from the skies," a Taliban survivor told the Sun while describing how an entire unit was buried alive in a strike by US B-52s. Osman Rakhim, 23, said the explosions caused by the giant US bombers started a landslide on his mountainside position. He said dozens of troops were killed when hundreds of tons of earth and rock came down on top of them. Rakhim wandered away from the carnage in a daze and later surrendered to the Northern Alliance. He said a whole unit ...

Wolfowitz Shares Special Forces' Afghanistan Dispatches just released by the American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Nov. 15, 2001 -- The Northern Alliance and other opposition groups have made tremendous progress in Afghanistan -- last week, they controlled about 15 percent of the country and today control about half. Defense officials said U.S. air support was pivotal in the battle. In his after-dinner keynote address at the Fletcher Conference here Nov. 14, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz spread the credit among all those participating. The Fletcher Conference is jointly sponsored by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Army. The ...

December 14, 2001 Fierce Al Qaeda Defense Seen as a Sign of Terror Leader's Proximity By JOHN KIFNER with ERIC SCHMITT ORA BORA, Afghanistan, Dec. 13 — American-backed forces believe that they have surrounded Osama bin Laden and the last of his hard- core fighters in a complex of caves between two valleys just south of here, a senior American military official said tonight. While American officials say they still do not know Mr. bin Laden's exact location and acknowledge that he could still slip out of the country, commanders are increasingly confident that a growing number of American, ...

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