Word: kabul
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...recruit and train officers with proficiency in other tongues. In last year's graduating class of case officers, just 20% had usable skills in non-Romance languages. When the war in Afghanistan began, the CIA had only one Afghan analyst. As TIME reported last month, American intelligence agents in Kabul almost blew the chance to question a top-ranking Taliban minister, who may have had information on the hiding place of Mullah Omar. The spooks had yet to hire a Dari translator...
...night. But from the air, it looked to the pilots like what their intelligence source had claimed: a gathering of al-Qaeda terrorists. Dozens of cars had converged on Qila-Niazi, a hamlet of 12 mud-walled homes in the shadow of a snowy ridge 80 miles southeast of Kabul. The women were gossiping and painting their hands red with henna. The men were in another room playing cards and dancing. Music drowned out the sounds of the U.S. warplanes overhead...
...Elsewhere, hundreds of Northern Alliance reinforcements sent from Kabul arrived in Gardez on Saturday afternoon. That raised murmur of discontent in the local Pashtun garrisons, because the reinforcements are Tajik fighters from the Pansjir Valley - longtime rivals of the Pashtun in Afghanistan?s complex tribal wars. One of the uniformed government infantrymen told Time they've been brought in to add punch to the Afghans? western assault...
...tribal elders sent by Taj Mohammed Wardak, the new governor of Paktia, the province where Shahi Kot is located. Wardak wanted Mansoor to leave his mountain base, expel his al-Qaeda guests (the governor believes they number about 60) and declare support for Hamid Karzai's interim government in Kabul. But those talks broke down, and U.S.-led coalition forces launched their attack on the mountain fortress last Friday...
...Taliban and al-Qaeda elements that have regrouped in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan want to use the casualties inflicted on the U.S. at Shahi Kot to embolden anti-American forces throughout the region. Even before this week's clashes, British peacekeepers had been fired on three times in Kabul, while U.S. forces had come under attack more than once in both Kandahar and Khost. Despite the setbacks at Shahi Kot, however, the U.S. still holds the initiative there, and defeat of Mansoor's troops will presumably be a setback for anti-U.S. forces. Still, there are emerging signs...