Free Republic

Driving to Taliban-controlled territory doesn't take long. Around 30 minutes from the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, passing large craters left by roadside bombs, we meet our host: Haji Hekmat, the Taliban's shadow mayor in Balkh district. Perfumed and in a black turban, he's a veteran member of the group, having first joined the militants in the 1990s when they ruled over the majority of the country. The Taliban have arranged a display of force for us. Lined up on either side of the street are heavily armed men, one carrying a rocket propelled grenade launcher, another an M4 assault rifle...

Italian bishops plan synodal path to overcome ‘stale’ structuresThis week the Italian bishops set to work on the initial preparations of their upcoming “synodal journey,” which was explicitly asked for by Pope Francis.At the close of their spring plenary assembly, the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) said the coronavirus pandemic is an ideal time to hold their own national synod, assessing not only the challenges the country faces in the current crisis, but the state of the Church.“For the bishops, it is time to abandon those superstructures known to be stale and repetitive, to recover the sense of verification and the...

NEAR FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan, Jan. 4, 2010 – While there may be no place in Afghanistan that is completely safe for U.S. and coalition forces, some regions certainly are much more dangerous than others. In those risky locales, the 1141st Engineer Company’s sappers -- combat engineers – who are part of the Missouri Army National Guard’s 203rd Engineer Battalion, are keeping Afghan roads clear of improvised explosive devices. The vast majority of vehicular traffic – military and otherwise – seeks to avoid contact with IEDs, but it is the job of these Missouri Guardsmen to hunt them like...

Security forces launched an operation against militants in Lower Dir on Sunday and there were reports of fierce clashes from different parts of the district. The ISPR claimed that several militants, among them a ‘commander’, had been killed in clashes in the Kala Daag area. It said the operation had been launched at the request of the NWFP government and local tribal elders. Militants’ spokesman Muslim Khan, meanwhile, threatened that the Taliban would carry out attacks in the entire Malakand region if the operation was not stopped. He accused the government of violating the Swat peace agreement by launching the...

Accused by the Taleban of spying, they were killed to deter locals from mixing with Nato forces SHOT and hanged from the branch of a fruit tree, the mother and her teenage son were summarily tried, sentenced and executed for no bigger a crime than delivering clean laundry to a relative. The fate of the 45-year-old woman and her 13-year-old son on Monday shocked even war-hardened locals in southern Afghanistan, where people are killed daily in the raging battle between the Taleban and the Nato-backed Government. “These two people had been to visit a relative in the town of Musa...

KARACHI - Ibrahim Hyder Village, a slum area of Karachi, is an extremely dangerous place. A known underworld hub situated on an old smugglers' coast, it is a place where no law-enforcement agency can dare conduct a raid. If any stranger ventures into Ibrahim Hyder Village, his body will likely be found in a gunny sack by sunrise. It was here, in this village, that al-Qaeda began smuggling its hoarded gold out of the country last year even as US bombs were falling on the organization's mountain redoubts in Afghanistan. The gold, packed in bags, was loaded onto cargo ships...