Mar 2002

TIME: On the Mop-Up Patrol

By MICHAEL WARE / SHAH-I-KOT

The attack comes a little before 5 a.m. Sporadic machine-gun fire has been heard throughout the night, and in the early hours of the morning, a hilltop observation post tells the team of U.S. special forces that there is suspicious movement south of the perimeter. Then comes small-arms fire, followed by the whoomp of an incoming rocket-propelled grenade. Tracers show a stream of outgoing rounds in reply. Afghan soldiers fighting with the Americans send their own RPGs into the night. The local Afghan commander, a short, stern man called Ismael, says they were plundered from a store of Taliban weapons he has discovered. His men try to fire illumination rounds, but two of three pop straight up. "We're helping the enemy more than we're helping ourselves," a U.S. soldier says with a laugh. The special forces are hamstrung by a lack of information; radio batteries in the forward positions have drained. "Walk in a direct line to the hill and head up to the observation post and get me information on what's out there," the American commander orders an Afghan patrol. "And take these batteries."

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TIME: Reporters' Notebook

By MICHAEL WARE; CATHY BOOTH THOMAS; JAMES CARNEY

MICHAEL WARE has been in Afghanistan for TIME since December. Based in Kandahar, he has been at the Shah-i-Kot front for the past two weeks.

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TIME: Encountering the Taliban

By MICHAEL WARE / KANDAHAR

General Tommy Franks, commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, calls the recent assault on Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants in the Shah-i-Kot Valley an "unqualified and absolute success." But he concedes that pockets of resistance remain and promises to go after them unceasingly. The British last week pledged to help, committing 1,700 troops to the effort. Who are these holdouts, and what are their aims? To find out, TIME embarked on a search for surviving Taliban fighters who refuse to yield. It required weeks of negotiation with Taliban commanders, who finally proffered an invitation to meet with two of them. "They will talk," said an Afghan contact, "but not in Afghanistan, somewhere safer."

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TIME: In Afghanistan, Shutting Down Taliban Support

By MICHAEL WARE

No army exists in a vacuum. One reason the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces holed up in their Shah-i-Kot stronghold have been able to last so long is that they have had crucial help from sympathetic locals. So this week, as the assault by Afghan forces to move the terrorists out of their base shifted into high gear, a team of Australian commandos conducted a raid designed to cut off some of that support. The mission came Monday, as an Afghan force of more than 350 footsoldiers led by General Zia Lodin and backed by six tanks and American air cover stormed up the western reaches of the terrorists' domain. Elements of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division swept down from the north. The plan: to drive the remnants of al-Qaeda's fanatical militia into the southern and eastern killing fields set by U.S. and Australian Special Forces along the most feasible escape routes.

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TIME: When Bad Information Kills People

By TIM McGIRK with reporting by MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON and MICHAEL WARE / KANDAHAR

This is what bad intelligence produces: a girl's dress, its embroidery stained dark red with blood, lying amid the rubble of a bombed-out building. Men wandering through the debris, gesturing to show where people were dancing when the bombs began to fall. And a U.S. special-forces soldier, who is said to have surveyed the scene and asked, "Why did we do this?"

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TIME: On al-Qaeda's Western Flank

By MICHAEL WARE / NEAR MANDZHAVAR

In a small stretch of pine trees at Dara, a village near Gardez, Special Forces and Afghan allies hunker down on a frontline. Al-Qaeda's forward positions lie across a few hundred feet of rocky ground, in the first of the mountains of Shah-I-Kot. The sky is filled with light snow and the drone of U.S. strike aircraft pounding the white capped peaks above. Occasionally, the jagged walls of rock rumble with explosions, and belch plumes of black smoke. Within hours the ground attack will recommence. Led by U.S. soldiers, these bedraggled Afghan fighting men in dirty shalwar kameez, vests, sandals, camouflage jackets and pukul will step out from their cover and charge the terrorists' bunkers, praying the bombardment has softened the waiting defenses. "This is 100 per cent danger," says a mujahid nursing his Kalishnikov. "But I'm not afraid," he adds, unconvincingly.

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