Jalalabad

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - A place called Milawa on the backside of the Tora Bora hill may be the last theater of war left in Afghanistan. With a cease-fire set for today in the southern city of Kandahar, the focus of the U.S. hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network will largely narrow to the high-elevation woods about 30 miles south of Jalalabad. About 200 U.S. troops are in the vicinity of Milawa and Jalalabad - up from earlier estimates of about 20 Special Forces - and U.S. cargo planes and helicopters have landed at the Jalalabad Airport in recent days and left logistical supplies, said Jalalabad Mayor Engineer Ghafar.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Police opened fire yesterday on protesters who were smashing windows, burning pictures of President Bush and shouting "Death to America" in reaction to reports that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Quran. Officials reported that four demonstrators were killed and 71 injured. The protests in the southern city of Jalalabad followed publication of an article in Newsweek magazine that said investigators probing abuses at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had discovered that interrogators "had placed [Qurans]

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Throughout the Taliban years, a large, wealthy community of al-Qaida members moved to this war-broken city - and thrived. In a land of mud houses and donkey travel, hundreds of expatriate terrorists built compounds and schools for their families on government land, cut deals with local authorities and bumped over Jalalabad's dirt roads in new pickup trucks. "We never had a conversation, because they never let Afghan people near them," said Mohammed Sharif, who lives next door to a Jalalabad compound that was home to 60 al-Qaida members.

MOSCOW - Thousands of demonstrators took over government buildings, blocked roads and airports and staged demonstrations across Kyrgyzstan yesterday to protest alleged fraud in recent elections in the impoverished Central Asian nation that is the site of a major United States air base. Government officials and eyewitnesses agree that the government no longer appears to be in control of Osh and Jalalabad, two of Kyrgyzstan's largest urban centers, in the face of escalating protests. Protesters demanding the resignation of President Askar Akayev took to the streets of those cities to find them deserted of police or troops.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- When asked about their futures, these men who have known virtually no past but war smile and speak warmly of peace, brotherhood and their love for all Afghans. Then, at the first approach of an armed stranger, they lock and load their weapons, prepared to kill. Such are the habits learned in a lifetime of fighting, and they are proving hard to break in the first days of an uneasy peace. Just ask a fighter named Zalmai. Shortly after saying, "We are optimistic for peace," he races to a stone wall with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher aimed at two pickup trucks approaching his checkpoint.

MOSCOW - Thousands of demonstrators took over government buildings, blocked roads and airports and staged demonstrations across Kyrgyzstan yesterday to protest alleged fraud in recent elections in the impoverished Central Asian nation that is the site of a major United States air base. Government officials and eyewitnesses agree that the government no longer appears to be in control of Osh and Jalalabad, two of Kyrgyzstan's largest urban centers, in the face of escalating protests. Protesters demanding the resignation of President Askar Akayev took to the streets of those cities to find them deserted of police or troops.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A bomb ripped through a minibus carrying female Afghan election workers and children yesterday morning outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing two women and injuring 13. The bus driver was arrested, and an investigation is under way, officials said. A man saying he was a spokesman for the Taliban called the Associated Press and took responsibility for the bombing. The Taliban and other insurgents have announced plans to disrupt the country's first elections, which are scheduled for September.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Police opened fire yesterday on protesters who were smashing windows, burning pictures of President Bush and shouting "Death to America" in reaction to reports that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Quran. Officials reported that four demonstrators were killed and 71 injured. The protests in the southern city of Jalalabad followed publication of an article in Newsweek magazine that said investigators probing abuses at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had discovered that interrogators "had placed [Qurans]

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's interim defense minister said yesterday that U.S. warplanes should soon halt their bombing because there will be no more al-Qaida targets left to hit. But almost as he spoke, two missile attacks thought to be the work of remaining al-Qaida sympathizers were reported in the region. In the eastern Tora Bora mountains, U.S. special forces and Jalalabad mujahedeen reportedly came under attack when enemy forces launched rockets and volleys of gunfire at a joint Afghan-American command base.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - The victors began to divide the spoils here yesterday, and already there are hurt feelings, the sort of game-face grumbling that in the past has always preceded major eruptions in Afghanistan. Which is why, in the weeks to come, events in this market town in the western end of the Khyber Pass may say a lot about how deeply, if at all, peace can take root in the wake of the Taliban's collapse. The succession of power here occurred much as it did in dozens of other Afghan cities and towns in the past week.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A bomb ripped through a minibus carrying female Afghan election workers and children yesterday morning outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, killing two women and injuring 13. The bus driver was arrested, and an investigation is under way, officials said. A man saying he was a spokesman for the Taliban called the Associated Press and took responsibility for the bombing. The Taliban and other insurgents have announced plans to disrupt the country's first elections, which are scheduled for September.

RECENT FIGHTING in the mountains of southeastern Afghanistan has been so muddled, ambiguous and treacherous that it makes the guerrilla war in Iraq look by comparison like one of those set-piece battles that the monarchs of Europe used to fight against one another. Afghan and Pakistani armed forces recently launched separate operations designed to roust the Taliban from its hideaways along the border, and wound up shooting at each other. Afghanistan claimed that the Pakistanis had invaded Afghan territory, and this news so inflamed a mob in Kabul that it sacked the Pakistani embassy.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Every night for the past week, Syed Raqab has squatted on the flat mud roof of his house, holding a flashlight and an aging bird gun, waiting for robbers. They come quietly, and Raqab thinks he knows who they are: the police. He says it's the only explanation he can come up with as to why the police refused to search for suspects when his brother's house next door was broken into a week ago yesterday. Or why robbers fleeing recently from another house hoisted themselves over a broken wall, right into the back yard of the local police station.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's interim defense minister said yesterday that U.S. warplanes should soon halt their bombing because there will be no more al-Qaida targets left to hit. But almost as he spoke, two missile attacks thought to be the work of remaining al-Qaida sympathizers were reported in the region. In the eastern Tora Bora mountains, U.S. special forces and Jalalabad mujahedeen reportedly came under attack when enemy forces launched rockets and volleys of gunfire at a joint Afghan-American command base.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - A place called Milawa on the backside of the Tora Bora hill may be the last theater of war left in Afghanistan. With a cease-fire set for today in the southern city of Kandahar, the focus of the U.S. hunt for Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network will largely narrow to the high-elevation woods about 30 miles south of Jalalabad. About 200 U.S. troops are in the vicinity of Milawa and Jalalabad - up from earlier estimates of about 20 Special Forces - and U.S. cargo planes and helicopters have landed at the Jalalabad Airport in recent days and left logistical supplies, said Jalalabad Mayor Engineer Ghafar.

MOSCOW - As Afghanistan's political factions meet in Germany to try to reach agreement on how best to piece together their shattered country, hundreds of merchants in a dingy hotel complex here are praying that the talks succeed. Over the past two decades, Afghanistan has been stripped of most of its professionals, civil servants and technical experts, people crucial for running a modern state. Many are here, wondering if they should return. Educated Afghans living in the West "are well off, they have legal status, and their children go to school - you can't expect them to return," says Gullam Muhammed, the unofficial leader of Moscow's Afghan community.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Every night for the past week, Syed Raqab has squatted on the flat mud roof of his house, holding a flashlight and an aging bird gun, waiting for robbers. They come quietly, and Raqab thinks he knows who they are: the police. He says it's the only explanation he can come up with as to why the police refused to search for suspects when his brother's house next door was broken into a week ago yesterday. Or why robbers fleeing recently from another house hoisted themselves over a broken wall, right into the back yard of the local police station.

KABUL, Afghanistan - On the night before he was murdered along the lawless road to Kabul, news photographer Aziz Haidari stayed almost as busy helping his colleagues as he did doing his own work. And he did so with the utmost patience and good humor. I know because I needed his help most. I was a mildly nagging presence at his shoulder for hours, waiting to bum a few minutes on his satellite phone. I wanted to send a news story and photo from Jalalabad back to Baltimore. Aziz was trying to send his day's work to his wire service employer, Reuters.

FRIENDS HAVE ASKED in the last couple of months if I didn't wish I were still foreign editor of this newspaper, a job I held for 10 years until the end of last August. The answer's no. Others have asked if I didn't wish I were still a foreign correspondent during this most important conflict since the Vietnam War. Emphatically not. In my 10 years as foreign editor, the Soviet Union collapsed, the Balkans disintegrated in a blood bath unprecedented in Europe since World War II, the United States kept bombing the bejabbers out of Iraq, half a million people were massacred in Rwanda, Zaire renamed itself Congo in a blood-soaked revolution, NATO went to war against what was left of Yugoslavia, the Israeli-Arab conflict seethed on and on and on. Foreign editors have to tell correspondents to go to the places where this sort of thing is happening.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan - Osama bin Laden was seen last week at a large and well-fortified encampment 35 miles southwest of this city, a minister of the self-proclaimed government here said yesterday. The official, Hazarat Ali, the law and order minister for the Eastern Shura, which claims dominion over three major provinces in eastern Afghanistan, said trusted informants had told him that bin Laden was spotted near Tora Bora, a village where two valleys meet in deep mountains in Nangarhar province.