Word: kot
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...Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters gathered south of Kabul. Code-named Operation Anaconda, the battle plan aimed at this force was a hammer-and-anvil strategy. Friendly Afghans, assisted by U.S. special forces, would flush the enemy from the north and northwest toward three exits of the Shah-i-Kot valley, where American troops waited. To the south, battle positions Heather and Ginger were divided by a hill christened the Whale, while to the east, battle position Eve guarded escape routes over the high mountains to Pakistan. But after two days of fierce combat, the al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters...
...Before dawn on Monday, two huge MH-47 Chinooks, double-headed flying beasts like something out of Tolkien, chugged through the frigid air. They were on their way from Bagram air base, north of Kabul, to Shah-i-Kot and the most intense battle so far of the Afghan war. A force that would eventually grow to more than 1,000 Americans, drawn mainly from the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne divisions, together with Afghan militias and about 200 special forces from allied nations, was engaged with perhaps 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters?four times as many enemy...
...just the death of Americans that distinguishes the battle of Shah-i-Kot?or even its intensity. (After a week of fighting, U.S. and French planes were still bombing enemy positions relentlessly.) Privately, in the Pentagon, a conviction is growing that the battle may be a climactic moment in the war. Before Christmas, in the ridges and caves of Tora Bora, the Americans had let their Afghan proxies do most of the fighting on the ground. As a result, hundreds?perhaps thousands?of al-Qaeda fighters escaped to fight another day. In Shah-i-Kot the brunt of the dirty...
...commitment of U.S. power was necessary because of the surprisingly large force arrayed in Shah-i-Kot. Hamid Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan's interim government, called the valley "the last isolated base of terrorism" in his country. Pentagon officials dispute that?a source says there are still major pockets of resistance around Herat and Kandahar?but acknowledge that the number of enemy troops in Shah-i-Kot was extraordinary...
...troops at Dara have been sent to wipe away al-Qaeda's western defenses and sweep over the mountains into Shah-i-Kot. At the same time the 101st Airborne is pressing down from the north, while the enemy?s retreat is blocked by the 10th Mountain Platoon and Special Forces to the east and south. But near Dara the bombs are still falling on the near side of the mountains, meaning the Afghan combat group here still has some way to go. "My next rotation to the front is in three days and I'll be up there...