At first the Taliban were
defiant. But after days of relentless attacks they finally
gave up and run away. This report was filed the first
night of bombing from where I was staying in the house
of a local Afghan commander.
Many had been fighting for
years by the time the US launched their attack on the
Taliban in late 2001. Here locals celebrate some of the
first Nato bombing runs.
Many of the much-feared
jihadis in Afghanistan were ordinary Muslims urged to
go and fight the infidel. As often as not they didn't
last long on the front line.
This story, which I chanced
upon with a colleague from the Guardian, exposed the cynical
way in which US forces turned a blind eye as their local
allies tortured and killed Taliban prisoners of war. It
provoked a minor scandal in Washington.
