Taliban Militia

The U.S. military has launched a program of armed Predator drone missions against militants in Pakistan that for the first time gives Pakistani officers significant control over routes, targets and decisions to fire weapons, U.S. officials said. The joint effort is aimed at getting the government in Islamabad, which has bitterly protested Predator strikes, more directly engaged in one of the most successful elements of the battle against Islamist insurgents.

The road to Bala Baluk district stretches arrow-straight ahead, with heat-shimmered cucumber fields on either side. But determining exactly what transpired nearly two weeks ago in a hamlet called Garani takes a far more twisted path. A battle raged. Bombs fell. Afghan officials say at least 140 civilians died, two-thirds of them children and teenagers, in what may prove the most lethal episode of civilian casualties since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Days of interviews with U.S.

U.S. military leaders have concluded that their war effort in Afghanistan has been too focused on hunting Al Qaeda, and have begun to shift Predator drone aircraft to the fight against the Taliban and other militants in order to prevent the country from slipping deeper into anarchy. The move, described by government and Defense Department officials, represents a major change in the military's use of one of its most precious intelligence assets.

The main highway is "enemy territory" for the Taliban, a busy two-lane road where U.S. troops race down the middle, trying to steer clear of suicide bombers. The guerrillas drive it like they own it. Grinning with contempt at a convoy of Polish troops trying to plow its way through traffic the other day, three Taliban fighters with guns and long knives concealed under their heavy woolen cloaks calmly eased into the other lane and beat the jam.

The northern alliance in this nation claimed to have pushed its extremist Islamic opponents out of the north's biggest city Sunday, a day after the Taliban militia claimed to have captured it. The city of Mazar-i-Sharif was the latest prize to fall to the Taliban militia in a series of spectacular victories in Afghanistan's civil war. Iran accused the Taliban of capturing 11 of its diplomats there and demanded their release. The Taliban said Mazar-i-Sharif was calm Sunday.

The Taliban militia on Saturday freed five Iranians in a goodwill gesture to ease tense relations between the two neighbors and asked Tehran to free Taliban fighters from Iranian jails. Taliban spokesman Maluvi Abdullahi Mutmain said the five were among "military" drivers captured when the militia seized the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif from opposition factions last month. "They were freed this afternoon as a sign of our willingness to improve relations with Tehran," Mutmain said.

Rockets landed near an airport on the outskirts of the capital, witnesses said, as fighting between the ruling Taliban militia and troops from the deposed government again threatened war-destroyed Kabul. The Taliban retaliated for the airport assault with several blistering air raids on government troops dug in around the strategic military base at Bagram, about 30 miles north of the capital.

Former Afghan government military chief Ahmed Shah Masoud has rolled back the Taliban militia that drove him from Kabul two weeks ago, taking two towns and possibly further territory, reliable sources said Sunday. They said Jabal os Saraj, the Taliban front-line headquarters town at the mouth of the Salang Pass through the Hindu Kush mountains and a two-hour drive from Kabul, fell Saturday.

Afghanistan's Islamic Taliban militia came up against the forces of a powerful warlord Monday after sweeping northward in relentless pursuit of former government troops. The rebel forces claimed victory over key northern towns and a province and said they had entered the strategic Panjsher valley, where they had bottled up former Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud after a two-pronged advance overnight from Kabul.

The woes of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban militia ruling most of Afghanistan deepened Thursday as their foes signed a military alliance against them. Already suffering the worst military reverses in their two-year existence, the Taliban were hit by an alliance among Uzbek chief Abdul Rashid Dostum, ousted government military head Ahmed Shah Masoud and Karim Khalili of the Shiite Muslim Hezb-i-Wahdat faction.