Free Republic

An Iranian Revolutionary Guards general and eight other Iranians have been arrested by Afghan forces and handed over to U.S. authorities, an Afghan politician said Saturday. Izzatullah Wasafi said the officer, whom he identified as a Gen. Razavi, was leading an Iranian group clandestinely distributing money and arms to allies in western Afghanistan when they were seized by Afghan forces last Tuesday. A day later, at a midnight meeting with Wasafi and others, the governor of Kandahar province abruptly decided to hand the men over to the U.S. military when he learned they were Iranians, Wasafi said. A U.S. military...

With the turquoise dome of the shrine to the 18th-century father of the Afghan nation rising in the background, Muhammad Akbar paused, leaned on his pick and said that he had never before been asked to dig a grave in the sacred soil of this compound. The grave was for Azimullah Muhammad, an 18-year-old who a week ago was an unknown seller of plastic water jugs from a dimly lit stall deep inside Kandahar's main bazaar. Now he is Afghanistan's newest hero, to be buried alongside mujahideen heroes of the guerilla war against the Soviet Union. On Friday, television viewers...