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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 ...

OPERATION: ENDURING FREEDOM Taliban hunting an American? Opposition leader executed reportedly accompanied by U.S. agent By Toby Westerman © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com At the same time some 1,500 opponents of the Taliban – warriors and holy men – gathered in Peshawar, Pakistan, to lay plans for the next Afghan government, Taliban fighters located and killed one of their most influential opponents – and may be hunting for an American reported to have accompanied him. Abdul Haq, a well-known hero of the anti-Soviet guerrilla war and long-standing opponent of the Taliban, was found south of the Afghan capital, Kabul, captured and then killed, ...

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...

WASHINGTON, Nov 01, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Already divided between north and south, war-ravaged Afghanistan appears to be moving toward a more permanent partition.The process of partition began long before the extremist Taliban militia was formed in 1994. According to some analysts it started with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.Created as a buffer zone between British India and the former Russian empire, Afghanistan survived the departure of the British from the subcontinent in 1947 because the fear of Soviet communism kept its various factions together.The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and its disgraceful ...

Afghan forces arrested three Americans, including a purported former Green Beret, after raiding a jail they were allegedly running in the Afghan capital and finding prisoners hanging from their feet, officials said Thursday. The U.S. military, facing a widening inquiry into prisoner abuse, quickly distanced itself from the three, who had been posing as American agents before being detained Monday. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Thursday "the U.S. government does not employ or sponsor these men." Afghan officials also dismissed claims by the apparent ringleader, Jonathan K. Idema, that he was a "special adviser" to their security forces, saying...

Most Afghans think their country is heading in the right direction despite concerns over security and the economic situation, according to an independent opinion poll released yesterday. In the most comprehensive survey to be held in Afghanistan 64 per cent of those polled said they were satisfied with the direction the country was taking, two and a half years after the American invasion removed the Taliban. Only 11 per cent said they were dissatisfied. The survey, commissioned by the Asia Foundation, an independent, privately funded American charity, showed that 81 per cent of people planned to vote in the presidential...

ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, Oct 28, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Four Algerians being held in the Netherlands as suspected terrorists were involved in the 2001 assassination of the former leader of Afghanistan's anti-Taliban alliance, Ahmed Shah Massood, a Dutch public prosecutor alleged Monday. The four men, arrested in April, face charges of falsifying passports, smuggling drugs and people, and "giving aid to the enemy in time of war," said prosecutor Jo Valente. The prosecutor spoke at a brief hearing in which the suspects' detentions were extended by three months while police continue investigations. The Dutch Justice Ministry believes the four...

NEW YORK -- Authorities believe a U.S. postal employee in custody here helped draft a letter of introduction that may have been used by two men who posed as journalists to assassinate a leading opposition figure in Afghanistan last fall, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case.Click here for full Washington Post article

Sultan Bhai stumbled out of the container. He drank a glass of water, took a few steps and died. The fate of Sultan, a Pakistani jehadi prisoner, was an example of what Afghans call "container death." The UN investigators presently opening mass graves in Afghanistan will find many like Sultan. He was buried after being transported in a freight container to Sheberghan, 120 kilometres from here. After three autopsies, a UN spokesman in Kabul recently said, "The absence of gunshots, concussion or stab injuries led the investigators to conclude that they died of suffocation." Many Pakistani jehadis captured by the...