Arghandab

The military equivalent of a preliminary hearing is set for Monday at Ft. Carson, Colo., for an Army private accused of premeditated murder in the shooting death of a senior Taliban commander being held prisoner in Afghanistan. Pfc. David W. Lawrence, 20, is accused of shooting Mullah Mohebullah in the head Oct. 17 while assigned to guard duty at a detention center in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Under military law, premeditated murder can carry the death penalty.

The former Taliban commander was furious, chain-smoking, scowling and scattering ashes on a plastic mat spread on the dusty ground. He deeply regretted, he said, that he had defected to the Afghan government side this year with nearly two dozen of his men, one of whom has already been hunted down and killed in revenge. And he did not believe that his former comrades in arms in the insurgency were ready to give up the fight for their traditional heartland. With this year's fighting season drawing to a close as the harsh Afghan winter sets in, U.S. commanders have declared that the "surge" ordered by President Obama two years ago achieved its aims.

An American soldier has been placed in custody and a criminal investigation opened into the shooting death of a Taliban prisoner in volatile Kandahar province, U.S. military officials said Tuesday. The incident could inflame tensions between the Western military and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who earlier in the day had described the detainee's death as an "assassination" and demanded a thorough investigation. The case coincides with grisly disclosures arising from the hearings in Washington state of five U.S. servicemen accused of deliberately killing Afghan civilians during a tour of duty in Kandahar and keeping fingers and other body parts as trophies.

When the fighting finally ended, the Taliban insurgents were gone from this farming village in southern Afghanistan. But the village was gone too. Tarok Kalache, a hamlet of mud-brick compounds and pomegranate groves northwest of Kandahar city, was razed five months ago amid fierce combat between Taliban fighters and U.S. and Afghan forces. Its three dozen farm families were scattered, its mosque flattened, its orchards reduced to rows of blackened ghost-trees, its irrigation canals choked with debris.

The former Taliban commander was furious, chain-smoking, scowling and scattering ashes on a plastic mat spread on the dusty ground. He deeply regretted, he said, that he had defected to the Afghan government side this year with nearly two dozen of his men, one of whom has already been hunted down and killed in revenge. And he did not believe that his former comrades in arms in the insurgency were ready to give up the fight for their traditional heartland. With this year's fighting season drawing to a close as the harsh Afghan winter sets in, U.S. commanders have declared that the "surge" ordered by President Obama two years ago achieved its aims.

When the fighting finally ended, the Taliban insurgents were gone from this farming village in southern Afghanistan. But the village was gone too. Tarok Kalache, a hamlet of mud-brick compounds and pomegranate groves northwest of Kandahar city, was razed five months ago amid fierce combat between Taliban fighters and U.S. and Afghan forces. Its three dozen farm families were scattered, its mosque flattened, its orchards reduced to rows of blackened ghost-trees, its irrigation canals choked with debris.

On a recent bell-clear autumn afternoon a few miles outside Afghanistan's second-largest city, villagers listened courteously as a U.S. military officer, speaking through an interpreter whose grasp of the local language seemed shaky, exhorted them to let Afghan police or American soldiers know if the Taliban came to town. Nodding in agreement amid the group were three men in beards, turbans and sandals who looked, dressed and talked like the other villagers. They were Taliban. "They were standing right there with us, and everyone was too scared to say anything," a farmer named Farid, who grows pomegranates in the Arghandab district, northwest of Kandahar, said as he described the encounter last month.

A pair of explosions tore through a group of spectators at an illegal dogfight Sunday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others in the latest in a string of deadly insurgent attacks in crowded public places. In the last five weeks, more than 100 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in bloody assaults across the length and breadth of the country. The targets ? a supermarket, a shopping mall, a bank, a wedding hall, a government records office, a sporting event ?

A pair of explosions tore through a group of spectators at an illegal dogfight in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen in the latest of a string of deadly insurgent attacks carried out in crowded public places. In the past five weeks, more than 100 people, most of them Afghan civilians, have been killed in bloody assaults that have leapfrogged the length and breadth of the country. The targets -- a supermarket, shopping mall, bank, wedding hall, government records office and sporting event -- have one thing in common: people congregated there.

Thousands of frightened villagers fled a district in southern Afghanistan that was overrun by Taliban fighters, as Afghan and NATO forces on Tuesday flew in hundreds of reinforcements to confront the insurgents. Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said early today that its troops had begun an offensive in the Arghandab district, and residents reported hearing exchanges of gunfire. But the scope of the fighting was not immediately clear.

A pair of explosions tore through a group of spectators at an illegal dogfight Sunday in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 10 people and injuring more than a dozen others in the latest in a string of deadly insurgent attacks in crowded public places. In the last five weeks, more than 100 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in bloody assaults across the length and breadth of the country. The targets ? a supermarket, a shopping mall, a bank, a wedding hall, a government records office, a sporting event ?

A pair of explosions tore through a group of spectators at an illegal dogfight in southern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing eight people and injuring more than a dozen in the latest of a string of deadly insurgent attacks carried out in crowded public places. In the past five weeks, more than 100 people, most of them Afghan civilians, have been killed in bloody assaults that have leapfrogged the length and breadth of the country. The targets -- a supermarket, shopping mall, bank, wedding hall, government records office and sporting event -- have one thing in common: people congregated there.

The military equivalent of a preliminary hearing is set for Monday at Ft. Carson, Colo., for an Army private accused of premeditated murder in the shooting death of a senior Taliban commander being held prisoner in Afghanistan. Pfc. David W. Lawrence, 20, is accused of shooting Mullah Mohebullah in the head Oct. 17 while assigned to guard duty at a detention center in the Arghandab district of Kandahar province. Under military law, premeditated murder can carry the death penalty.

An American soldier has been placed in custody and a criminal investigation opened into the shooting death of a Taliban prisoner in volatile Kandahar province, U.S. military officials said Tuesday. The incident could inflame tensions between the Western military and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who earlier in the day had described the detainee's death as an "assassination" and demanded a thorough investigation. The case coincides with grisly disclosures arising from the hearings in Washington state of five U.S. servicemen accused of deliberately killing Afghan civilians during a tour of duty in Kandahar and keeping fingers and other body parts as trophies.

On a recent bell-clear autumn afternoon a few miles outside Afghanistan's second-largest city, villagers listened courteously as a U.S. military officer, speaking through an interpreter whose grasp of the local language seemed shaky, exhorted them to let Afghan police or American soldiers know if the Taliban came to town. Nodding in agreement amid the group were three men in beards, turbans and sandals who looked, dressed and talked like the other villagers. They were Taliban. "They were standing right there with us, and everyone was too scared to say anything," a farmer named Farid, who grows pomegranates in the Arghandab district, northwest of Kandahar, said as he described the encounter last month.

Sgt. Tait Terzo was manning the patrol point just after dawn Saturday with his bomb-sniffing dog, Urmel, an eager Belgian Malinois whose job was to warn the U.S. soldiers behind him if he caught a whiff of explosives. Sgt. Steve Peterson, a few paces behind, decided to inspect a pile of cow manure beside a dirt wall. Insurgents have hidden bombs in stranger places. And then Peterson, 23, was knocked on his belly in the dirt, his arms curled around his M-4 carbine, his mouth full of grit, his ears ringing.

It was always important to to be responsible, to support himself and his family and shield them from worry. "He was an inspiration to me," said his mother, Patricia Dahl, 42, who is divorced from her son's father. "Sometimes it's hard being a single parent. But he kept me going." An Army crewman on armored vehicles, he never told her that he was fighting on the front lines. The last time she talked to her son, he told her not to worry, that he was going on his last mission and he probably wouldn't be able to talk to her for a few days.

Sgt. Tait Terzo was manning the patrol point just after dawn Saturday with his bomb-sniffing dog, Urmel, an eager Belgian Malinois whose job was to warn the U.S. soldiers behind him if he caught a whiff of explosives. Sgt. Steve Peterson, a few paces behind, decided to inspect a pile of cow manure beside a dirt wall. Insurgents have hidden bombs in stranger places. And then Peterson, 23, was knocked on his belly in the dirt, his arms curled around his M-4 carbine, his mouth full of grit, his ears ringing.

It was always important to to be responsible, to support himself and his family and shield them from worry. "He was an inspiration to me," said his mother, Patricia Dahl, 42, who is divorced from her son's father. "Sometimes it's hard being a single parent. But he kept me going." An Army crewman on armored vehicles, he never told her that he was fighting on the front lines. The last time she talked to her son, he told her not to worry, that he was going on his last mission and he probably wouldn't be able to talk to her for a few days.

Thousands of frightened villagers fled a district in southern Afghanistan that was overrun by Taliban fighters, as Afghan and NATO forces on Tuesday flew in hundreds of reinforcements to confront the insurgents. Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said early today that its troops had begun an offensive in the Arghandab district, and residents reported hearing exchanges of gunfire. But the scope of the fighting was not immediately clear.