Mahmud and Hamid were asleep. They were rolled up in their robes, their heads on the ground, no pillow. It was an old Indian trick, taught to them by an antiquated Hindu: sleeping directly on the ground, the vibrations of approaching vehicles, or even of walking feet, would wake them. Not using a pillow was a little hard on the neck, but not so hard as getting caught by the Taliban.
Mahmud awoke. Far off in the distance he heard a motor. He heard trucks. And shuffling feet, lots of them. They were approaching, along the road. He could smell camels. Was their position being attacked? Should he sound the alarm? He nudged Hamid and found his partner was already awake. The two hunkered down on the dark, gripping their rifles, and in the cool night air they could hear voices. Wriggling on their bellies, they found a position where they could make out the mob on the road by starlight.
"Mommy!" a child's voice piped in Arabic. "I don't wanna force-march through the desert to Baluchistan!"
There was the sound of a slap. "Shaddup and walk, ya little brat! You'll like it even less if the natives get us!"
Four men walked past. They wore turbans, had unkempt beards and carried guns. One had two guns and a Yemeni knife at his waist; he must be a holy man. They were carrying sacks. One of the four men dropped a sack. Mahmud thought he could briefly see the twinkle of jewels. "Careful with that!" the holy man said. "There's enough in there to support us all for years!"
Some pickup trucks went by, slowly passing the mob on foot. Someone went by on a bike, a rolled up carpet over his shoulder.
A half dozen men walked by, surrounding a tall, bearded figure with a big turban and only one eye. "We gotta jihad!" the figure mumbled. "Hang them all... Doe-eyed virgins... Fight to the last man... the last bullet..." The figured cackled. "The wench showed an ankle! Two hundred lashes!"
"Did we have to bring him?" one of the half-dozen keepers asked. "He's gettin' wound up again."
"Get your turban on straight!... Infidels... Unbelievers..."
"Karzai's got enough problems. Abdul, did you bring his medication?"
"Cut their noses off," the one-eyed lunatic mumbled. "String 'em up... Send in the Americans! I'll take 'em on... One hand tied behind my back..." His voice was starting to rise. Mahmud had heard that voice before, on the radio. He looked at Hamid and they rolled their eyes at each other.
"If he gets violent again," one of the half dozen said, "I'm gonna shoot him."
"Ooooh. That'd be smart, with 5,000 armed tribesmen around us and 1,500 Marines! Do me a favor and don't do that."
They tromped on another few yards and the volume of the incoherent ranting increased. "Glorious death... Rule with the iron fist of virtue..." The one-eyed loon pointed out that he was his own grampaw and his first cousin. He was waiting for a phone call from his good friend, God.
"Look," the man who had spoken last said. "If he gets violent again, use this on him. Just bash his head in. We don't want any noise."
They moved out of earshot and into the darkness. Mahmud and Hamid watched as more women and children walked by, then more men carrying bags with loot. A donkey trudged by them, not ten yards away, with two poison gas cannisters strapped to its skinny back. Someone went by carrying a bucket of anthrax. One unfortunate porter carried a bomb almost as big as he was. He was already glowing in the dark.
The last of the stragglers finally finished trudging by. The two mujaheddin waited until they were out of earshot and then rolled back up in their robes and went back to sleep. In the morning Kandahar would surrender.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/07/2001 ||
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At Kandahar fleeing Taliban fighters backed out of a deal to hand in weapons and surrender, said Hamid Karzai. "The Taliban ran away with their weapons,'' he said. "Basically they have just run away. The leaders and the soldiers. They have all run away from the city... They came in trucks up the road toward us. All of last night they were fleeing the city. Just running away. I thought they were coming here to attack us. But they weren't. They were running away.'' Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar is missing and will be arrested if found. "The Taliban rule is finished. As of today they are no longer a part of Afghanistan,'' Karzai said. Karzai confirmed that chaos had broken out in several areas within Kandahar as a result of Taliban soldiers and leaders fleeing. He said there was no fighting between rival forces. However, frightened residents reported some looting had taken place and said gunfire could be heard.
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12/07/2001 ||
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A Taliban official said that "Around 10,000 people, the majority of them Taliban soldiers, have been killed. During the last two weeks the casualties were so heavy that we were unable to resist the bombing and our defence lines were broken."
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"Most of the area in Tora Bora is now completely under tribal forces' control," said a Pakistani intelligence source. Bin Laden's Arab fighters had withdrawn from many of their Tora Bora hideouts and were believed to be scattering in the mountainous terrain towards Melawa.
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The Afghan Islamic Press reported Omar had fled Kandahar. "Mullah Mohammed Omar is not in Kandahar. He has moved to some unknown place," said Haji Basheer Ahmed, a member of the tribal commission to which the Taliban surrendered power. "Okay, you guys fight to the death. I'm gonna go for help."
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12/07/2001 ||
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The political situation remained unclear. Tribal commander Gul Agha, former governor of Kandahar, reportedly had moved into the governor's mansion, and some other tribal fighters were trying to regain positions they lost when the Taliban came to power in 1996.
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U.S. Marines killed seven absconding Taliban and al-Qaida fighters near Kandahar. No Marines were injured. Three Taliban vehicles approached a "hunter-killer'' Marine patrol on a road Thursday night, and the Marines attacked from the ground and air.
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12/07/2001 ||
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In Kandahar a sense of calm had returned there after chaos and widespread looting earlier in the day. People were in the streets, firing guns to celebrate the tribal victory.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
12/07/2001 ||
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Brandishing a copy of an al-Qaeda manual on "the overthrow of the godless regimes", Attorney General John Ashcroft rebuffed criticisms he might be overstepping his powers in the fight against terrorism. "This is a seized al-Qaeda training manual -- a "how-to" guide for terrorists -- that instructs enemy operatives in the art of killing in a free society," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "In this manual, al-Qaeda terrorists are told how to use America's freedom as a weapon against us," he warned, adding it was thanks to actions by law enforcement agencies there had been no repeats of the September 11 attacks that left more than 3,000 dead on US soil.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
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Former US leader Jimmy Carter expressed grave concern over the use of military tribunals. In a rare criticism of the current president by a predecessor during a time of crisis, Carter also deplored the detention of more than 600 people in the United States following the September 11 terror strikes on US targets.
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12/07/2001 ||
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US special envoy Anthony Zinni has arranged a security meeting between the Palestinians and Israel to try to defuse their crisis, Yasser Arafat said. The Palestinian Chairman-for-Life said he had been phoned by Zinni and that the US envoy also met with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
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12/07/2001 ||
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An Israeli F-16 bombed the Palestinian police headquarters in Gaza City, completely destroying two buildings and wounding 18 people. The fighter bomber dropped a large bomb on the police compound at around 3:00 a.m. and returned five minutes later for a second strike. Two four-storey buildings inside the compound -- the offices of the riot police and an administration buliding -- were completely destroyed. Four other buildings were damaged. The women's police center, the police school, and a medical building suffered moderate damage, while the office of the commander of the Gaza police was lightly hit.
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12/07/2001 ||
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Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher. "The prime minister said Israel has no intention of hurting Arafat and said Israel will not bomb the jails in which militants will be detained as Arafat fears," Sharon's office said. Israel on Wednesday gave Arafat 24 hours to round up Palestinian Islamic militants or face a new wave of attacks against key targets of his administration. Palestinian security officials told AFP that 180 people were rounded up since Saturday, including around 50 since the ultimatum was received.
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12/07/2001 ||
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Melbourne's 55-storey Rialto Towers, Australia's tallest building was the preferred target of a man arrested in India for planning September 11-style terrorist attacks, Prime Minister John Howard said. The man at the center of the allegations, Mohammad Afroz Abdul Razzak, was arrested in Bombay on October 2 and remains in custody. Afroz confessed to planning airborne terrorist strikes in Australia, Britain and India. Some 10,000 people work in the complex.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
