Word: mujahedin
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This is not the first time warlords have had positions of power in Afghanistan. Following the 1989 withdrawal of Soviet troops, rival mujahedin groups that had united to drive the foreigners out turned on each other, further destroying the country in a brutal civil war marked by warlord rule. The government collapsed, and militia commanders were able to seize territory, terrorize the population and, in some cases, even issue currency. The Taliban capitalized on widespread disgust with their savagery, eventually coming to power in 1996. The U.S., unwilling to commit large numbers of ground troops when it went to overthrow...
...killed, who did anything for us?" a man called Shadullah asked, referring to anti-Muslim riots in northern India in 1992 and '93. He said he was among seven people holding hostages at the Oberoi but didn't make any specific demands other than for the release of other mujahedin jailed in India and for an end to the persecution of Muslims. He did not reveal where the group comes from, though the Deccan in its name presumably refers to the plateau that stretches across southern India...
Throughout its history, Afghanistan's many wars have not been fought for territorial gain; instead, its indigenous protagonists have been proxies for bigger, more complicated enemies. During the Great Game, the British fought there to prevent the Russians from invading India. In the 1980s, Americans equipped mujahedin to bleed the Soviet Union dry. In the civil war following the 1989 Soviet withdrawal, Pakistan backed the Taliban, a fundamentalist faction fostered in its own religious seminaries, to counter Indian influence in the rival Northern Alliance. When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1994, Pakistan was one of only three nations to recognize...
...Kabul that morning while walking to work at a Christian charity helping the handicapped. Her assassins were two men on a motorbike, whose bullets hit her in the neck, chest and thigh. Later that afternoon, Ali spoke with Zaibullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, who claimed responsibility: "It was our mujahedin who killed [this] woman who was inviting Afghans to Christianity. She was under suspicion, so we investigated, and after our investigation was completed, we chased her and finally our mujahedin killed her today...
...became an independent nation in 1947. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Islamabad, with U.S. and Saudi funding, sent thousands of men across the border to join Afghans in fighting the Soviets. The Pakistani military used religious schools in the borderland to train and equip Afghan mujahedin and to heal them when they returned. More than 3 million Afghan refugees took shelter in Pakistan's cities and in makeshift camps. But after the Soviets withdrew in 1989, the U.S. lost interest in the region. Afghanistan's war of liberation turned into a civil war, and the Pakistani government...