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NATO defense ministers meeting here today discussed expanding the role of NATO forces in Afghanistan. "NATO's first priority … is to get Afghanistan right," NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said in a late-afternoon press conference. "We have no choice in Afghanistan but to meet our commitments to the people of that country and to the international community." NATO is in command of the United Nations-mandated International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, the country's capital. Almost 8,000 NATO troops are involved in this mission. The first step in expanding the alliance's role there could be to stand up five...

In the line of duty, a hero emerges Ambush at Afghan fortress leads Brookfield man into action and, Friday, to a distinguished honor Tampa, Fla. - Maj. Mark Mitchell had come a long way from the young boy who grew up in the shadow of Milwaukee's County Stadium, watching the Brewers, rising at 4:30 a.m. to deliver the Sentinel, dreaming that one day he'd be a soldier. Now he was. And not just any soldier. A Special Forces officer, schooled in Arabic and trained to make decisions in tense, fast-changing situations when lives are on the line. On the morning...

Paula Zahn introduced a story this morning about atrocities by the Northern Alliance in Mazar-E Sharif. When the reporter in the city explained the " atrocity", it turned out that it was a fire fight between the Talban and the Northern Alliance. During the fight the Taliban were asked to surrender several times. They refused. They died. End of story. The real atrocity is that CNN is still on the air.

KANDAHAR, Nov 15 (PNS): Taliban have launched an offensive on Mazar-i-Sharif as reports pouring in indicate clashes between Taliban and Northern Alliance soldiers in the suburbs of the strategic city which fell to the opposition forces just a few days ago. The disclosure was made by a correspondent of Al-Jazeera TV, Al-Shawli talking to journalists here Wednesday after arriving from Kandahar. He told that Taliban are giving tough time to the Northern Alliance troops and seems to be in no mood to give up. He however expressed concerns over deteriorating conditions in the city as hospitals are running out ...

600 bodies found in Mazar-i-Sharif (Filed: 22/11/2001) RED Cross workers found up to 600 bodies in Mazar-i-Sharif after it was abandoned by the Taliban, but cannot say how they died. Olivier Durr, head of operations for central and south Asia for the International Committee of the Red Cross, today said 400 to 600 bodies were found in the city after the Taliban left on November 9. "But we cannot say these people had been brutally executed or were the result of fighting. Even before our expatriate staff entered (the city) our Afghan colleagues started to collect and bury quite a ...

GENEVA (Reuters) - The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that between 400 and 600 bodies had been found in the northern Afghan town of Mazar-i-Sharif after its capture by the Northern Alliance. Spokeswoman Macarena Aguilar could not say whether the dead had been executed or killed in fighting that preceded the fall of the town on November 9. "I know 400 to 600 bodies have been found and that we have so far buried 300," Aguilar told Reuters. "I cannot say how they died," she added. She could not say from what ethnic group the dead ...

TERMEZ, Uzbekistan, Nov 23, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A U.N. official said Friday that the United Nations hopes to soon restore regular operations in the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.Antonio Donini, deputy U.N. coordinator for Afghanistan, said he had met Thursday with Gen. Rashid Dostum - one of the warlords who took back the city Nov. 9 - and received assurances international staff could operate safely there."We were assured that we could resume activities as normal," Donini said in the Uzbek port city of Termez, adding that staff could return permanently to Mazar-e-Sharif within a week. "The ...

LONDON, Nov 24, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A Taliban fighter in Mazar-e-Sharif blew himself up with a hand grenade on Saturday, killing two other fighters and seriously injuring a northern alliance commander, said a British TV reporter who was slightly injured. ITN reporter Andrea Catherwood, who was hit in the knee with shrapnel in the northern Afghanistan town, told ITV News that about 500 foreign Taliban fighters, mostly from Pakistan, had driven overnight across the desert from Kunduz. "They were met by Uzbek warlord General Dostum in the desert. They were disarmed, or so we thought. A ...

MSNBC just reported that we have had the first American Special Ops casualty in the revolt by the Taleban prisoners that were taken from Kunduz to Mazar-i Sharif.

MSNBC is reporting that the Pentagon is denying the reported death of a Special Forces soldier in the Taliban POW uprising in Mazur-I-Sharif today. Developing...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov 26, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Pakistani clerics Monday deplored the deaths of hundreds of foreign prisoners in northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif and announced a nationwide day of mourning against what they called the barbaric act of the U.S. and anti-Taliban forces. "It makes no sense that people who have surrendered will revolt against their captors," Munawaar Hasan, general secretary of the Islamic fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami told The Associated Press. "It is a lame excuse to justify the massacre of unarmed men. We will observe a black day on Friday to mourn the deaths of ...

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Nov 27, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- U.S. special forces aided northern alliance fighters battling captured loyalists of Osama bin Laden for a third day Tuesday in a sprawling mud-walled fortress in northern Afghanistan.U.S. airplanes circled above the Qalai Janghi fortress, where Taliban prisoners captured by the alliance in the siege of Kunduz last weekend rained rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on alliance troops trying to suppress the uprising. Witnesses reported heavy airstrikes on the fortress overnight.Five U.S. soldiers were seriously wounded when a U.S. JDAM smart bomb called in by special forces went astray, exploding near ...

DUSHANBE, Nov 27, 2001 (Itar-Tass via COMTEX) -- About 200 Taliban militants and foreign mercenaries are still blocked in the Kalaye-Djangi fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif, Shamsulhak Oriefar, secretary of the Afghan embassy in Dushanbe, said Tuesday. The men organized a revolt several days ago. Oriefar said forces of the United Anti-Taliban Front had blocked all approaches to the fortress. They did not take any actions to prevent more bloodshed and the unnecessary victims. The Talibs and the mercenaries have been offered to surrender, but they prefer committing suicides rather than becoming prisoners of war. In a comment on the mass ...

ISLAMABAD, November 27 (PNS): Deploring the massacre of prisoners of war in Mazar-e-Sharif, President General Pervez Musharraf has urged the world community to persuade Northern Alliance to abide by UN charter on POWs. This he said during his meeting with Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka here Monday at Chief Executive Office. The visiting Foreign Minister called on him along with the members of her delegation. She also delivered a special message from Japan Prime Minister to President Musharraf in which he has expressed best wishes for the people and government of Pakistan assuring that Japan will extend full cooperation and ...

From amongst the believers are men who have been true to the oath they made with Allah. From them are those who have fulfilled this oath (been martyred in Allah's Way) and from them are those who are still waiting, but they have never changed in their determination in the least.[Quran 33:23[ Three days after the Mujahideen prisoner revolt began in Mazar-i-Sharif, the last Mujahideen fighters were killed, fighting, as they vowed, to the last drop of blood. Hundreds of these Mujahideen, in a pre-planned martyrdom operation, managed to kill over 500 Alliance troops and dozens of US and British ...

<p>Infantry from the Army's 10th Mountain Division have crossed from Uzbekistan into northern Afghanistan to serve as a quick-reaction force in case of renewed Taliban resistance around the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, officials said Wednesday.</p> <p>The force is comprised of no more than two dozen soldiers, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. One official said the numbers might be increased.</p>

Photos from the captured fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif [11/28/01]. Several hundred foreign fighters fighting for the Taliban were killed during three days of fighting.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Nov 29, 2001 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- With a loud boom and a mushroom cloud rising into the air, U.S. special forces cleared unexploded ammunition Thursday from around Mazar-e-Sharif's main airport, working to open the way for humanitarian aid flights. A group of 10 special forces troops piled ammunition into a 10-foot-deep crater and set it off by remote control. Nearby, local residents used picks and shovels to patch up the runway, which officials said they hoped could be ready for flights in eight days. The airport still bore heavy scars, its main runway pockmarked with ...

Survivors found at Mazar fort More than 80 survivors have come out alive from the ruins of an Afghan fort-prison where hundreds of their colleagues were killed in a three-day revolt earlier this week. A New York Times journalist, James Hill, told the BBC that 13 men surrendered on Friday - the rest emerged on Saturday after Northern Alliance forces flooded their hiding place in the fort's basement. Speaking to the BBC World Service programme Newshour, Mr Hill said it appeared the men - many of whom were badly injured - had run out of ammunition and had not eaten ...

PARIS, Dec 02, 2001 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- About 40 French soldiers entered the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Saturday to secure and rebuild the airport so humanitarian aid can get through, the Defense Ministry said."The French components have as their mission to secure the perimeter of the airport during the time it takes to restore the runway," the ministry said in a statement released late Saturday.A ministry spokesman said the operation by the French forces will consist largely of mine-clearing and filling of craters caused by bombing from the U.S.-led coalition carrying out air strikes in ...

<p>MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (AP) -- An explosion ripped through a market in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday, wounding 100 people, hospital officials and witnesses said.</p> <p>The blast occurred late Thursday afternoon. One of the wounded said he saw a fragmentation grenade roll into the moneychangers' section of the central market before the explosion.</p>

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan (AP) - An explosion ripped through the central market in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Thursday, injuring 100 people, six of them seriously, according to hospital officials and witnesses. One of the wounded said he had seen a 32-piece fragmentation grenade rolled into the moneychangers' section of the bazaar just before the late afternoon blast. There was no known suspect in the attack. Local Health Minister Mirwais Rabde Sherzod called the explosion a terrorist act. "The people who did this meant to destroy the peace and tranquility of our city," Sherzod told reporters. Mazar-e-Sharif, the largest ...

MAZAR-I-SHARIF: The US army soldiers stopped their van suddenly in the middle of a busy intersection, beckoned to the officer directing traffic from atop a concrete podium and handed him a new silver whistle. The officer, who had been using a black-and-white striped club to keep traffic flowing, smiled at the soldiers, jammed the gift into his mouth and whistled them along. Mission accomplished for a small team of soldiers waging a sort of charm offensive to win hearts and minds in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. The soldiers have been handing out notebooks at schools, visiting refugee camps ...

YOL ABAD, Afghanistan (news - web sites) (AP) - Nearly two months after the Taliban were routed from Mazar-e-Sharif, fighting still flares in villages around the northern city as warlords sort out the complex web of Afghan rivalries. Along both sides of the narrow, dusty road outside the tiny village of Yol Abad blood stains market spots where soldiers were gunned down just days ago. Details of what started the shooting Saturday are murky; that it happened is taken as a matter of course. Skirmishes are reported several times a week in the region around Mazar-e-Sharif as militias controlled by ...

Soldiers with the 10th Mountain Division,, based at Fort Drum, helped build a hospital out of tents in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The new facility, which opened Tuesday, includes a large clinic, pharmacy tent, six ward tents, a triage tent and a radiology tent. The 200-member staff, including 27 doctors, is supplied by Jordanian military. &quot;In 10 days, we built a hospital,&quot; said Dr. Ziad F. Al-Shraideh, an anesthesiologist who works at the new facility. &quot;Medical supplies and equipment are far superior (here) to traditional Afghan hospitals.&quot; Under Taliban rule, routine medical care was hard to find, ...

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan, Mar 20, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Gen. Anwar Quaraishi struts around the plaza surrounding this northern Afghan city's famous blue mosque, eyeing troops in new dark-green camouflage uniforms and fur-collared coats preparing Wednesday to keep the peace during Persian New Year celebrations.Mazar-e-Sharif is getting ready to put on its largest party since the Taliban left to celebrate the holiday Thursday with an expected 1 million revelers from across northern Afghanistan. And with that, the city, renowned for vicious ethnic clashes, has put in place some of the strictest security ever seen here.More than four months since...

Batten the hatches ladies and gents. It looks like that propaganda storm that's been a-brewing on the horizon is getting ready bust loose. Prepare yourselves for the arrival of Massacre at Mazar, a "documentary" that tells the honest-to-God, true-to-life, tell-it-like-it-was, no-holds-barred story of American G.I.'s gunning down innocent Talibanis during that prison uprising last year in the Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif. You want war crimes? You can't handle war crime!! Witness this lede from the Guardian: A former chairman of Amnesty International yesterday called for an independent investigation into claims that US troops tortured Taliban prisoners and assisted in the...

DoD News Briefing Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz Monday, July 15, 2002 EDT (Media Availability at Jordanian Hospital, Mazar-i Sharif) The Jordanians have been with us since December 23rd. They came in when it was still dangerous around here. They came in even though it is a small country with a very substantial contribution and I've been watching those numbers grow over the months. That it's now over 80,000 people they have treated in over a thousand operations and you can see the conditions under which they have to do it all. It's really wonderful. Obviously it would be...

A documentary with never before seen video will air in 30 minutes on the Mazar-i-Sharif uprising on CNN. If you remember about a dozen US and British special forces arrived and kiled about 400 Talis (admittedly with some help later on from air power). It was a good kill ratio that day.

<p>War often brings Americans together. In the case of Johnny Michael Spann and John Walker Lindh, however, it also set them apart.</p> <p>Last December the CIA's Mr. Spann was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, after being murdered in a prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan, that the captured Lindh somehow survived. On Friday, Lindh was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for his service to the Taliban.</p>

  Special Forces Officer Honored for Heroism in Mazar-e-Sharif Prison Battle   By Jennifer K. Whittle & Army Reserve 1st Lt. Steve AlvarezSpecial to American Forces Press Service MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Nov. 14, 2003 — The first Distinguished Service Cross awarded since the Vietnam War, and the highest military decoration awarded to date in the war on terror, was presented today to Army Special Forces Maj. Mark Mitchell.Mitchell earned the medal for his leadership during the Battle of Qala-I-Jangi Fortress during Operation Enduring Freedom. He was the ground force commander of a rescue operation where he ensured the...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 12/13/02 - Bagram, Ganj, Islamabad, Kabul, Kandahar, Kikambala, Mahagir, Mazar-e-Sharif, Mombasa BREAKING: Bagram mine field clearing BREAKING: Ganj, near Kandahar winter coming BREAKING: Islamabad, Pakistan, RAWA rally BREAKING: Kabul, Kandahar BREAKING: Kikambala, Kenya perp BREAKING: Mahagir, Afghanistan BREAKING: Mazar-e-Sharif, Spann memorial ========= Afghanistan - Freed by the USA after the 911 Atrocities ========= ========= Bagram ========= In Bagram, heroes of the 769th Engineering Army on MCVs. In Bagram, custom air cushioned 'moon boots' for demining. ========= Ganj ========= In Ganj, near Kandahar, Afghanistan, winter fast approaches. ========= Kabul ========= In Kabul, on...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 11/2/02 - 82nd Airborne, Op.Alamo Sweep, Gaza, Kabul, Kandahar, Al-Azmi BREAKING: Rocket Attacks Launched on US Bases in Afghanistan BREAKING: Southeastern Afghanistan - 82nd Airborne on Operation Alamo Sweep BREAKING: Gaza Hamas/Fatah garage explosion wipes out 3 terrorists Kabul, Kandahar Mazar-e-Sharif - buzkashi game Kuwait - with the Al-Azmi Bedouin tribe Masada, Israel ========= Kabul ========= In Kabul, girls and women were freed by the USA after the 911 Atrocities, but conditions remain difficult. In Kabul, home sweet home. In Kabul, getting, and carrying, water home. In Kabul, for the brick factory...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 9/17/02 BREAKING: Messages from Saddam and the USS Abraham Lincoln Incirlik, USS Abraham Lincoln, Hussein's letter, Baghdad, Bagram, Uddin, Jeza, brick factory, Kabul, market, potter, Mazar-e-Sharif, Mazar Hotel, Jalalabad garrison, Terrorits in Ramallah, Beit Lahia, Arafat's Al Aqsa, American flag burning, Lebanon, Wazzani river, Cairo, Egypt, Great Pyramid's door, Doha, Qatar, Al Udeid Air Base, Lukman, Usama Matar, Hizb ut-Tahrir (The Liberation Party), Kamal Derwish sought ===================== Turkey =================== In Turkey, at the Incirlik air base, heroes check missiles on F-16 fighters as other heroes patrol the No-Fly Zone in Northern Iraq...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 9/15/02 BREAKING: Baghdad Rahall (D,W.Va), BREAKING: Bagram blaze, BREAKING: Lackawanna, Baghdad racetrack, Kabul, Darbar temple, Kandahar, Zahir Shahi school, Mazar-e-Sharif Afghan and Sikh women - FREED BY THE USA DNS -- DIOGENESIS NEWS SERVICE NEWS WITH A BYTE(TM) BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE FIRST AMENDMENT TO THE US CONSTITUTION ===================== Baghdad =================== In Baghdad, Iraq, Iraqophile Nick Rahall (Democrat from W.Va.) panders. Some Americans do not think he should be getting any secure information because he does not care about the Logan Act. In Baghdad, Iraq, Rahall meets with James Jennings,President of...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 9/5/022 BREAKING: Kabul >110 Pakistani Taliban prisoners released, BREAKING: Khost, night visioned SF, Incoming 107mm, AT-4 anti-tank weapons, Afghan dervish, market, Afghan girls and women freed by the USA but reburq'd by the UN and local opinion, Kandahar, weapons cache, Blue Mosque, discrimination at the clinic Mazar-e-Sharif, Perp Mullah Omar REMEMBRANCE: Pentagon, World Trade Center =========== Khost =========== Near Khost, 80 miles southeast of Kabul, through night vision optics, US Army Special Forces and Afghan Military Forces (AMF) take a home of an Al Qaeda cell in Ayul-Khei. In Khost, US Army...

Tale of an American Taliban In an exclusive, a U.S. citizen on the horror at Kala Jangi By Colin Soloway NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE Dec. 1 — Abdul Hamid is tall, thin and barefoot in a filthy black tunic. A prisoner of the Northern Alliance, he sits with his elbows bound behind his back with a strip of cloth, his right leg and left foot bandaged for gunshot wounds. Hamid’s face is almost entirely covered in dirt and black soot, but it is quickly apparent that he is not just another beaten and frightened Taliban warrior. Abdul Hamid, age 20, ...

ABUL, Afghanistan, July 15 — They are mostly the faces of men now dead: wild-haired Taliban fighters sitting in rows, their arms tied at the elbow behind their backs, shown on videotape minutes before one of the most desperate battles of the war in Afghanistan. These are the men — among them Arabs, Pakistanis, Uzbeks and at least two American citizens, including John Walker Lindh — who fought in the prisoner uprising at Qala Jangi, the mud-walled 19th-century fort outside the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan. Most were killed.The New York Times has obtained a copy of the...

WASHINGTON, Nov 15, 2001 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan are taking part in combat operations against the Taliban and have had close scrapes with enemy fire, according to two unclassified dispatches from troops Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz released Nov. 14. The messages, dated Oct. 25 and Nov. 10, describe scenes of great bravery and danger, and indicate some of the apparently easy battles were more harrowing than they appeared. A U.S. element was nearly overrun by Taliban troops on Nov. 6 but remained in position to call in air support from U.S. ...

GOTTA SEE THIS -OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM 4/9/02 <========================> REPORT FROM THEATRE 1 - Afghanistan In Kabul, British Royal Marines arrive and then practice accuracy and precision. 31 miles west of Kabu, the control center of the Kabul hydroelectric power. In Kabul, at the bazaar, extending to the river. In Kabul, at the Buzkashi game. No matter what universe you are from, that has to hurt. In Kabul, kite flying is legal, thanks to President Bush and the USA. Kite Wars. Even kite fights are taken seriously, using poles and barbed wires to destroy each others kites. Somewhere between Kabul and...