New tactics in Taliban killing season
Nick Meo Glasgow Herald Scotland May 11, 2008
Haji Mohammed Karim, a towering Pashtun in a black turban who carried his crippled son in his arms, had come in search of a magical cure to the graveside of Kandahar's al-Qaeda martyrs. The Arab cemetery where 70 jihadis and their families were buried after they were killed in an air strike in 2001 has become a shrine for desperate Afghans. The graveside was crowded with childless women seeking sons and the fathers of mentally disabled boys. "They were foreigners but they left their homes and families to fight for Islam," said Karim. "They are an example for us like our Taliban fighters today." The Arab cemetery, full of the green flags of martyrdom, is in the heart of Loya Wyala, a north Kandahar slum and Taliban stronghold. Its jumble of mud-brick homes is notorious for its thieves, gunmen for hire, and the longing of its jobless young men to fight foreign soldiers.
advertisement
In recent weeks Nato troops have swept through looking for crude bomb factories and arms caches prepared for the annual spring fighting season, which started last month as the snows melted in Afghanistan's mountain passes. For two summers now, Taliban fighters have been slaughtered in unequal battles against heavily armed Nato forces in the pomegranate orchards and opium poppy fields of southern Afghanistan. But this year they seem to have learned from their mistakes, ...
Anytime
