Word: pakistani
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...mesh with diplomatic efforts aimed at cobbling together a successor government to the Taliban. But that political alchemy can't be ordered off the shelf. The West must first broker a consensus among Afghanistan's multitude of opposition groups. In Pakistan last week, Colin Powell seemed to get behind Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's proposal that a governing coalition would include Taliban "moderates"--members of the majority Pashtun tribe in the south who could be convinced, or bribed, to peel away from the regime. Rumsfeld signaled that the Pentagon no longer intends to eradicate Taliban forces wholesale. "It is going...
...while Rumsfeld said, "we do see snippets of intelligence information suggesting part of the Taliban is starting to decide that they'd prefer not to be part of the Taliban," there were also signs that some are committed to fight to their death. Young militants streamed across the Pakistani border near Chaman hoping to join the fight. At the strategic northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, Taliban fighters waged pitched battles against the local opposition forces of the Northern Alliance. "The morale of the Taliban is fine," an Afghan aid worker from Kabul told TIME. "In face of rockets...
...reports, but there were certainly other hazards. Returning from its mission and attempting to land in pitch blackness, one Black Hawk helicopter got caught on a sand dune near the Dalbandin runway, lost its balance and flopped over, killing two crew members and injuring three others, according to a Pakistani witness. American servicemen who returned safely to Dalbandin were so jittery that they refused to brief Pakistani military officers unless the officers removed their gun holsters before approaching the helicopters. Elsewhere in Afghanistan, bands of U.S. troops continued their covert search-and-destroy missions. The ground...
...troops could face fearsome resistance once they actually venture down there. A former mujahedin commander based in Kandahar told TIME that one possible target would be a mountain complex in southwestern Afghanistan, built by bin Laden as an al-Qaeda base because of its proximity to the Pakistani border. The camp is nestled in a canyon lined with gunners--reportedly Sudanese--who are fiercely loyal to bin Laden. "The Americans are crazy to go in there," says the Afghan vet. "The Arabs are everywhere. It's like a scorpions' nest...
...most Americans, the term moderate Taliban would be an oxymoron, not unlike "middle-of-the-road Nazi"--just a joke in search of a punch line. So when Secretary of State Colin Powell cautiously endorsed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's view that such members of the repressive Afghan regime might have a role to play in a future coalition government, many people shared the same reaction as the partisans in the conflict. Both the Northern Alliance's Foreign Minister and the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan declared defiantly, "There's no such thing...