The Sunday Times Their faces concealed with chequered scarves, the Taliban assassins found Haji Zahir Arian sitting on cushions in the living room of a friend’s house. They wasted no time in striking a blow against peace. The first hitman to enter the small room raised his rifle and loosed off four rounds as Arian, […]
The Sunday Times The young Taliban commander with a penchant for severing spies’ heads with strands of thin wire dragged 28 of his foot soldiers from a makeshift jail and lined them up against a mud wall at his base. Pacing along the row of handcuffed men, the fresh-faced 21-year-old — surrounded by bodyguards — […]
In keeping with the Nuristan theme, I thought I’d add a small detail that was left out of the story on Sunday. Maulana Fazlullah, nicknamed the “Radio Mullah” after he launched a pirate radio station in Pakistan’s Swat Valley in 2006, is apparently still hiding in Nuristan despite claims that he was killed in May […]
The Sunday Times The Al-Qaeda instructor spent an hour schooling his protégé, a 12-year-old Afghan boy, in the art of suicide bombing. Flanked by retired officers from Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the Arab militant is said to have shown the boy how to approach his target calmly before pressing the handheld button that would detonate […]
Afghanistan’s finance minister has received death threats over his handling of a banking crisis that has mired Kabul’s political elite in accusations of corruption and fraud. Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal told American and European ambassadors in a meeting earlier this year that the threats on his life had forced him to move members of his […]
Miles Amoore 