Kabul Afghanistan

City officials are considering forming a sister-city relationship with Kabul, Afghanistan. Fremont is home to about 10,000 Afghan Americans. A section of the city has even been nicknamed Little Kabul. Afghanistan has no sister cities. The idea was recently proposed by Sister Cities International, a nonprofit corporation that handles such relationships. Fremont's other sister cities include Fukaya, Japan; Puerto Penasco, Mexico; Horta, Portugal; and Jaipur, India.

Afghan authorities on Wednesday morning said the last of six attackers who laid siege to the U.S. Embassy and other buildings from a high-rise structure had been killed and the area was secure. The midmorning announcement by the Interior Ministry came nearly 21 hours after the start of the attack, raising troubling questions about why it took so long to secure the building under construction that the assailants used as a staging ground. From its upper floors, they rained rockets and gunfire on a heavily fortified enclave containing embassies, government buildings and the headquarters of the NATO force.

There's one bookstore in the world where you'll never, ever find a copy of "The Bookseller of Kabul." That would be the Bookseller's. The epic literary feud that erupted with the book's publication more than five years ago still endures -- at least from the perspective of Shah Muhammad Rais, who hated his depiction as Sultan Khan, a liberal intellectual in public but a tyrant in his own home.

There are "disturbing" signs Pakistan's government knows about insurgents crossing from their country into Afghanistan, U.S. Sen. John Kerry said Sunday as he toured the region. "Yes, there are insurgents coming across the border," he said at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. "Yes, they are operating out of north Waziristan [Pakistan] and other areas of the sanctuaries, and yes, there is some evidence of Pakistan government knowledge of some of these activities in ways that is very disturbing.

Old-timers remember this as a lively, playfully irreverent city. Once, street urchins had a standard greeting for Westerners strolling down the market lanes: "Hey, Mr. Katchalu, " they would shout. That means "Mr. Potato" in the local Dari language. The nickname dates back two centuries to the Europeans who introduced potatoes to this remote Central Asian land ringed with mountains. But it is no longer heard on the streets of Kabul.

There's a tense little drama being played out in the streets of this Central Asian capital these days, and here are some of the main characters and props: -- The Trojan, also known as the lonely American: He's clever, provocative, fluent in Russian and Persian. He honed his political skills in the campus elections at USC. -- The Fat Russian: He's probably KGB, has a loud, crude laugh and moves in the shadows but defers to no one. But two bodyguards are at his side day and night.

It was just after a quiet sunrise Sunday in a valley awash with spring that the first rockets ripped through the Mogul palaces of Afghanistan's ancient kings. Then came the staccato cracks of a dozen assault rifles. The earth trembled when a tank opened fire.

At the Kabul Zoo, even the empty enclosures are a draw: They're quiet. Off a busy street leading to the city's commercial center, the zoo is no longer the city's pride, but it does provide a refuge from the traffic, noise and chaos of the Afghan capital. Parents bring children here to walk amid the tall trees and gaze at the animals -- even the empty enclosures. Women in pale blue burkas stroll the grounds. "In the Muslim world especially, a place where women and children can gather safely as a family with or without their menfolk is important," said David Jones, director of the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, which is offering support to the zoo, on the banks of the winding Kabul River.

The U.S. flag will be raised over the reopened embassy in Afghanistan on Sunday, signaling a renewed American diplomatic presence for the first time in 12 years, the State Department said. Ambassador James Dobbins, a veteran diplomat, will officiate at the ceremony, joined by a small number of State Department employees and a Marine security guard detachment. The mission will initially operate as a liaison office and will become a full-fledged embassy once diplomatic relations are restored.

An Afghan rebel rocket hit the largest military ammunition dump in Kabul, wounding at least five people and setting off explosions that rocked the city for hours. An official with the official Bakhtar news agency said the rocket hit the Khair Khana munitions depot, about half a mile from Kabul's airport, sending up towering flames that were visible miles away. The U.S.-backed rebels have been pounding Kabul with rockets from their positions in surrounding mountains for more than a month.

As their target, they selected the hub of Afghan governance, a part of downtown Kabul that includes the presidential palace, the Justice Ministry, the central bank and other heavily guarded buildings. Then, on Monday morning, as the heart of the capital bustled with shoppers and Afghans on their way to work, seven Taliban militants with AK-47 assault rifles, grenades, rocket launchers and suicide vests hidden under their shawls unleashed their attack. The militants left five people dead and laid bare Kabul's vulnerability even as the U.S. ratchets up the war to rout the militancy.

At the Kabul Zoo, even the empty enclosures are a draw: They're quiet. Off a busy street leading to the city's commercial center, the zoo is no longer the city's pride, but it does provide a refuge from the traffic, noise and chaos of the Afghan capital. Parents bring children here to walk amid the tall trees and gaze at the animals -- even the empty enclosures. Women in pale blue burkas stroll the grounds. "In the Muslim world especially, a place where women and children can gather safely as a family with or without their menfolk is important," said David Jones, director of the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, which is offering support to the zoo, on the banks of the winding Kabul River.

There's one bookstore in the world where you'll never, ever find a copy of "The Bookseller of Kabul." That would be the Bookseller's. The epic literary feud that erupted with the book's publication more than five years ago still endures -- at least from the perspective of Shah Muhammad Rais, who hated his depiction as Sultan Khan, a liberal intellectual in public but a tyrant in his own home.

An Afghan soldier shot and killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded two more outside a top-security prison near this capital Sunday, a U.S. military spokesman said. The gunman was shot dead by other Afghan troops at Pul-i-Charki prison, east of Kabul, said U.S. Army Maj. Sheldon Smith, a spokesman for the Combined Security Transition Command, a body that trains and mentors Afghan security forces. The Americans were providing external security for the prison when they were shot, Smith said. U.S.

The new Kabul Serena hotel rises in the middle of the city, a palace of sandstone, built around gardens that even in summer's drought gleam green. Step inside and you step out of Afghanistan. The central air conditioning produces a perfect temperature, the inlaid marble floors are a soothing cream and, miraculous for a city where open sewers crisscross most neighborhoods and dust coats every surface, the place smells clean.

In the Afghan capital, Westerners buy caviar from the supermarket while Afghans struggle to buy bread. Foreign women suntan in Chanel swimming suits while their Afghan counterparts are afraid to take off their burkas. Alcohol is banned under the new constitution, yet beer and wine parties are in full swing. But the good times enjoyed by thousands of aid workers, security contractors, consultants and even a few liberal-minded Afghans may be coming to an end.

Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud has moved thousands of guerrillas to Kabul for a counterattack against a renegade fundamentalist chieftain besieging the capital, guerrilla officials said Tuesday. Masoud, a commander of the Jamaat-i-Islami guerrilla group, called up several thousand reinforcements from his stronghold in northern Afghanistan, guerrillas in the Pakistani border town of Peshawar reported.

The new Kabul Serena hotel rises in the middle of the city, a palace of sandstone, built around gardens that even in summer's drought gleam green. Step inside and you step out of Afghanistan. The central air conditioning produces a perfect temperature, the inlaid marble floors are a soothing cream and, miraculous for a city where open sewers crisscross most neighborhoods and dust coats every surface, the place smells clean.

When Ghulam Sakhi Noorzad was appointed mayor of Kabul in March, the first thing he did was visit his old engineering office and rifle through a filing cabinet that had been closed for more than 20 years. Under a thick layer of dust and dirt he found what he was looking for: the blueprint for the Afghan capital he drew up a quarter-century ago. His master plan will form the basis for rebuilding postwar Kabul.

She is a Norwegian journalist who covered the war on the Taliban and stayed to write a postscript about the Afghan people. He is an erudite Kabul bookseller who, intrigued by her curiosity, invited her into his home to live with his family for five months. Write about us, he told her. Our lives, our culture. Tell the world. Write whatever you want. She did. And he hated it.