Recent works by James Rupert

The shepherd who saved the SEAL

When Afghan shepherd Muhammad Gulab left this mountain home one morning in June 2005 to check on a strange noise his family had heard in the woods, he found a frightened and wounded American soldier pointing his rifle at him.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Militants’ reach challenges Pakistan

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A low-level Muslim cleric stunned Pakistan last week by shooting dead a prominent woman politician because, he said, Islam did not permit her to hold government office or to appear in public without a veil. And the shock deepened when it became known that the killer had confessed to murdering at least four women four years ago but had escaped prosecution.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Attack at Pakistan airport

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Armed men attacked the airport here, Pakistan's capital, last night, signaling a deepening challenge for a key U.S. ally in the "global war on terror."

Thailand awash in tides of transition

Foreign tourists and middle-class Thais jammed restaurants, hotels and downtown streets on New Year's Eve to celebrate the end of a tough year for Thailand. Nearly 15 weeks earlier, the army had overthrown the divisive prime minister following months of street protests over his alleged corruption and abuse of power.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Report: Control Taliban zones

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Winning the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan will require a major restructuring of the Pakistani state, a prominent research group said yesterday.

U.S. role in fatal raid

A day after Pakistan's deadliest attack of the "global war on terror," residents say that U.S. surveillance drones fired at least some of the missiles that killed an estimated 80 people in a religious school near the Afghan border.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Fighting to teach lesson of peace

Tanvir Muhammad is worried as he surveys the school he has half built amid the rubble of this earthquake-crushed city. While he struggles to re-establish his three schools for orphans and destitute children in Pakistan's Kashmir region, his former allies in the Islamic militant movements here are running scores of them.

A quiet wariness as usual in Korea's DMZ

The nuclear test that raised tensions and threats last week between North Korea and the world has brought little change here at the spot in Korea where tensions and armed threat are the most routine.

N. Korea neighbors wary of sanctions

Having won new worldwide sanctions against North Korea following its apparent nuclear bomb test, the Bush administration has begun pressing a reluctant China and South Korea to enforce them aggressively. But North Korea's closest neighbors, nervously contemplating a dangerous period in their region, want to avoid direct confrontation with the government of Kim Jong Il.

NORTH KOREA CRISIS: THE HISTORY

Troubling failure to communicate

The crisis over North Korea's declared nuclear bomb test is the result of a long failure by U.S. and North Korean elites to understand each other, especially in the fevered air of the United States' global war on terror.

North: Sanctions act of war

North Korea warned yesterday that it considers the Bush administration's demand for sanctions against it "a declaration of war." The country's No. 2 official said the North's response might include a new nuclear bomb test.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Little to ward off the winter

A year after Kashmir's mountains bucked and shuddered with South Asia's deadliest earthquake in centuries, 40,000 survivors face a second Himalayan winter in tents. Another 1.8 million live in temporary shelters, many of wood and iron sheets, that will afford varying degrees of warmth for winter survival, relief agencies say.

Rockets point at Musharraf offices, home

Unknown attackers set several short-range rockets to fire toward the offices of President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad and his official residence in the neighboring city of Rawalpindi, security officials said yesterday.

Taliban truce raises doubts

As Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf visits the White House today for talks about the war on terror, evidence is growing that his peace deals with Pakistan-based Taliban groups are letting them step up attacks on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Falling on road to reform

When U.S. forces entered Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 attacks to overthrow the Taliban regime, they found thousands of Pakistani students from religious schools carrying guns to fight them.

Put off by papal words

Angry protests by Muslims spread worldwide Friday over a lecture by Pope Benedict XVI that quoted a sweeping medieval condemnation of Islam.

Pakistan, rebels sign peace accord

The Pakistani government signed a peace accord with Islamic militant rebels yesterday that leaves the militants - who call themselves Taliban and are closely allied with the Afghan Taliban movement - in effective control of most of the border region of Waziristan.

Pakistani unrest mounts

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the man Washington is leaning on to uproot Islamic extremism here in one of its main strongholds, is looking more politically isolated in the three days since his army killed a charismatic, 79-year-old rebel leader.

Pakistan province erupts after attack

Riots erupted during the weekend and Pakistan faced a wider civil war in the southwest after the ruling army killed the most prominent leader of the Baluch ethnic group.

Deal may lead to more attacks

Pakistan's ruling army is forging a peace deal with Islamic militant guerrillas in the country's border region that will likely free the militants to increase attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan, sources close to the talks say.

Plotter swayed by extremist

Matiur Rahman, the Pakistani widely suspected of helping to plan a mass bombing of trans-Atlantic airliners this summer, began his transformation from schoolboy to accused terrorist by listening to speeches by a mesmerizing sectarian preacher, his father says.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Plotter in custody?

The government here has captured Matiur Rahman, the Pakistani al-Qaida leader widely suspected as the mastermind of this month's alleged airline plot, military officials here said yesterday.

Pakistan faults Afghanistan

This week's news on the investigation into the airliner plot has hit a sensitive nerve in Pakistan's government.

AIR SCARE

Hunt for suspect

Investigators are seeking a Pakistani, Matiur Rahman, as the chief organizer of the London airliner plot and the main link between a corps of young British Muslims and the al-Qaida network.

Key suspect's al-Qaida ties

A man identified as an al-Qaida member and a "key person" in the terror plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic has been arrested in Pakistan, but a U.S. official said Friday that the mastermind of the plot still remains at large.

A nation under scrutiny

Pakistan announced yesterday that it arrested unidentified people inside its borders in helping Britain to foil the planned terrorist attacks revealed yesterday. Government officials here spoke up hours after France's interior minister told journalists that the plot "appears to be of Pakistani origin."

India suspects Kashmiri militants

No immediate evidence or claim of responsibility indicated who bombed the packed commuter trains of Mumbai yesterday. But India's news media and its prime minister suggested that militant Muslim Kashmiri separatists should be blamed.

Taliban grabs hold in Pakistan

The guerrilla commander's voice boomed into the dark at Hassu Khel, a farming village in this country's borderland with Afghanistan. Through a loudspeaker, the voice warned Pakistani troops camped at the village's edge that militant Islamic fighters surrounded them and would attack in 15 minutes if they did not abandon their post.

Christians live in fear

A few months after U.S. forces helped overthrow the Taliban regime here, a young, educated Afghan eagerly joined the thousands returning from exile to build a new, peaceful, tolerant Afghanistan. The United States had promised its help and pushed a liberal politician, Hamid Karzai, into the presidency.

Amid faint hope, keeping the faith

Zablon Simintov turned from the television one recent Sunday evening to gaze out a window at the darkened sky. "Akhir-i-Shabbat" - "the end of the Sabbath," he grunted.

Rice rallies, Afghans still worry

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew into Afghanistan yesterday to applaud embattled President Hamid Karzai and renew the U.S. commitment to defeat the Taliban. But her upbeat message drew attention to the very issues on which Afghans' doubts are deepening.

4 U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan

With the deaths Wednesday of four U.S. Army troops and mounting losses among Taliban fighters, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai yesterday urged U.S.-led forces to rethink their strategy while condemning the rising Afghan death toll.

Afghan media decries order

The war against the Taliban has gone badly these last months, but Afghanistan's national intelligence agency this week took action to reverse the tide of bad news.

Taliban revival

The United States and its allies have been forced to launch their biggest military operation of the war here because in the 55 months since ousting the Taliban movement from power, they neglected to establish minimal security or governance in the country's south, analysts say.

Harder task to catch Osama

So what about killing bin Laden?

U.S. crash sparks fatal Afghan riots

Mobs of young men burned foreign aid missions, police stations and any other symbol of power or wealth they could reach yesterday in Kabul, in the Afghanistan capital's worst rioting since the overthrow of the Taliban.

JAMES RUPERT FROM AFGHANISTAN

Rockets target Taliban

Helicopters from the U.S.-led coalition force rocketed a southern Afghan farming village for five hours before dawn yesterday, killing at least 20 Taliban guerrillas and 17 village residents.

Taliban fight intensifies in Afghanistan

Taliban guerrillas fought Afghan police and U.S. and Canadian troops yesterday in some of southern Afghanistan's fiercest battles since the United States ousted the Islamic militant movement from power in 2001.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Junkyard dangers

Muhammad Mushtaque, an impoverished junkyard laborer, took a sledgehammer late last month to break up a heavy chunk of steel and brass. A friend, Muhammad Rafiq, held the oblong casing steady on the packed dirt of the yard, a neighbor said.

REPORTING FROM DUBAI

The impact of rejection

In many ways, America's ties here seem quietly back to normal after Congress scuttled a Dubai firm's purchase of U.S. port facilities. U.S. Navy ships are docking for shore leave at the main port south of town and the government is warmly welcoming American business, celebrating a regional office being opened here by the Manhattan-based financial services firm Morgan Stanley.

Battling a resurgent Taliban

The Pakistani army has been fighting its most intensive battle so far against neo-Taliban guerrillas in the region of North Waziristan. The government is claiming success in the fight, but residents and analysts say the guerrillas have not been defeated.

Terror allies waging turf war

Only days after President George W. Bush visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two key U.S. allies are battling each other in a way that analysts say can only undermine the fight against terrorism.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Bush tries to put out fires in Pakistan

President George W. Bush bolstered his key Muslim ally in the "global war on terror" yesterday, declaring that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf still is committed to fighting Islamic extremist groups and to restoring democracy in his country.

Strike, protests greet Bush visit

Pakistanis shut down their country with a nationwide strike and protests Friday as President George W. Bush flew here from India for talks with President Pervez Musharraf.

Pakistan bomb kills U.S. official

A suicide bomber rammed his car into a U.S. diplomatic vehicle in Karachi yesterday, killing an American official and three other people. That attack, a day before President George W. Bush's planned arrival in Pakistan, underscored the tensions around Bush's visit to a country whose leader is a key U.S. ally but whose population is increasingly anti-American.

Taliban hideout smashed in Pakistan

Army helicopters and troops destroyed a hideout of Taliban guerrillas yesterday near the Afghan border, killing about 25 to 30 militants, Pakistani officials said yesterday. Residents accused the army of having killed innocent civilians and local tribesmen struck back hours later at an army base nearby.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Bush visiting an ally on edge

President George W. Bush's visit here this week may go pretty much as did Friday's prayers at Laal Mosque. All was calm, but everywhere were muffled signs of Pakistanis' deepened hostility and frustration these days toward the United States and its ally, President Pervez Musharraf.

Protests turn political

Hundreds of Pakistanis battled police around the capital yesterday as opposition politicians tried to use public anger over Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad to attack the pro-Western government of President Pervez Musharraf.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Pakistan furor over cartoon targets Western businesses

Pakistani protests against the Danish cartoons satirizing the prophet Muhammad spilled into violent attacks on American and European businesses yesterday.

Islamic holy day attacks kill 35

Sunni and Shia Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan fought yesterday on the Islamic holiday of Ashura, leaving at least 35 people dead. But such violence was avoided in Iraq, where attacks during Ashura have killed hundreds in the past two years.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Where the Taliban still rule

Four years after the United States led the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, a new Taliban movement has taken control in a swath of neighboring Pakistan.

CIA takes calculated risk in Pakistan

When CIA officers decided this month they had a fix on al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, they also judged there was no way to arrest him. The village where they believed Ayman al-Zawahri was planning a meeting of militants was deep in a rugged, Pashtun tribal homeland where thousands of well-armed men would fight any troops, American or Pakistani, who might enter.

Key al-Qaida likely dead in air strike

Last Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan apparently killed four leading al-Qaida figures, including the group's most prominent chemical weapons and bomb designer, Pakistani officials said yesterday. The announcement strengthened indications that the CIA, which reportedly conducted the attack, successfully hit a high-level meeting of militants from al-Qaida and other groups.

Two key al-Qaida militants missing after U.S. strike

Two al-Qaida militants reported missing and suspected killed in Friday's U.S. missile attack in Pakistan are key regional commanders along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Afghan and Pakistani analysts said.

REPORTING FROM PAKISTAN

Terrorists among those killed in U.S. strike

Friday's missile strike on the village of Damadola killed "four or five foreign terrorists" in addition to 18 local people, the top Pakistani official in the region said yesterday. The statement indicated that the attack, reportedly conducted by the CIA, at least partly hit its intended target, a gathering of al-Qaida militants.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Deadly strike is latest public relations disaster

Friday's U.S. air strike on a Pakistani village has disrupted America's efforts to improve its image in this country, one of its most important Muslim allies, and has turned glaring publicity on a part of the "global war on terror" that the United States and Pakistan have tried to keep hidden. In both ways, the incident has weakened one of Washington's main backers in the Muslim world, President Pervez Musharraf.

Deadly consequence

A day after the CIA apparently slammed high-explosive missiles into this farming village, there was no visible evidence that the attack killed leaders of al-Qaida as U.S. officials say they intended.

Militant groups aid quake victims

The United States is pressing Pakistan to bar militant Islamic groups that Washington views as terrorists from doing relief work in the country's earthquake-shattered Kashmir region. President Pervez Musharraf has said the groups play an essential humanitarian role and will be monitored, but not shut down.

No comfort in Kashmir

When rain or snow pelts the muddy woods and terraced fields of Muhammad Yunus' mile-high mountainside, his family members scramble to the crude tent that has been their shelter since the Oct. 8 earthquake. All 32 of them.

For survivors, winter is death

Each day in the northern mountains, helicopters buzz through the sky like buses and villagers haul food, tents and tools on their backs. They are racing to save 3.5 million people, their homes destroyed in October's earthquake, from the risk of dying of exposure this winter.

Christian peace team faces perilous journey

In 27 months of militant attacks on foreign aid agencies in Iraq, nearly every such group has pulled out: the United Nations, the Red Cross and dozens of others. The tiny Christian Peacemaker Team has watched them go, quietly continuing small projects to aid Iraqis and promote reconciliation amid war.

REPORT FROM FALLUJAH

A city remains captive

At the edge of this city the other day, Fallujah residents waited in a line of 130 cars to pass through the fortifications, document checks and vehicle inspections that separate their city from the outside world.

Life among the ruins in Pakistan

Last month's earthquake crushed Zarwali Khan's clothes shop, so he has moved his business to the pile of concrete rubble that lines Bank Road. Each day, Khan spreads a frayed plastic sheet atop the waist-high debris pile and lays out his cheap nylon and cotton socks for the stream of people walking by.

Pledges for Pakistan quake aid jump to $5.4B

Following a scolding by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, governments and international development banks more than doubled their promises of aid for Pakistan yesterday, six weeks after the massive earthquake here.

Barriers to learning the truth

Amid the havoc of Iraq, news organizations in Baghdad have hunkered down, putting their offices into one or another hotel and paying to build defenses. The Hamra Hotel - where Newsday is based, along with the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, NBC and others - is surrounded by cast-concrete vehicle barriers, security guards with AK-47s and security cameras like the one that produced TV pictures of Friday's bombing.

REPORT FROM IRAQ

Some see U.S.-backed Iraqi guards as death squads

Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad's streets these days, you can't miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad's traffic jams in police cars or camouflage-painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.

Second Saddam trial lawyer killed

Masked gunmen assassinated a second defense lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial yesterday, raising new worries that Baghdad's chaos may prevent the U.S.-backed government from holding a trial seen as fair and credible.

Guerrillas target police

About 40 Iraqi guerrillas, some dressed in the black robes and veils of conservative women, attacked policemen at a checkpoint here Friday, killing six officers, officials said.

Car bomb shatters Shia market, kills 20

A car bomb shattered a market crowded with Shia Muslims yesterday, killing at least 20 people. It was the third such attack on Shia markets in five days - the latest wave of violence blamed on Sunni extremists aiming to escalate what many Iraqis regard already as a Sunni-Shia civil war.

October is fourth most lethal month in Iraq

A car bomb spewed fire and shrapnel through a crowded market in the southern city of Basra last night, killing at least 20 people. Earlier, guerrillas' bombs killed seven U.S. soldiers in the Baghdad region, and U.S. bombs killed at least a half-dozen civilians in a remote western town.

Writers jailed in 2002 for political satire

Badr Zaman Badr and his brother Abdurrahim Muslim Dost relish writing a good joke that jabs a corrupt politician or distills the sufferings of fellow Afghans. Badr admires the political satires in "The Canterbury Tales" and "Gulliver's Travels," and Dost wrote some wicked lampoons in the 1990s, accusing Afghan mullahs of growing rich while preaching and organizing jihad. So in 2002, when the U.S. military shackled the writers and flew them to Guantanamo among prisoners whom Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared "the worst of the worst" violent terrorists, the brothers found life imitating farce.

Shia leader not endorsing

As Iraq prepares to elect a full-term government in December, the country's most powerful religious leader threw the race open a little wider Friday by refusing to endorse any party.

Counting nation's loss, one by one

An Army sergeant from Killeen, Texas, has become the 2,000th American soldier reported killed in the Iraq war.

Vote final, divide deepens

When election officials proclaimed yesterday that Iraqi voters had approved a constitution in this month's referendum, the U.S. and Iraqi governments cheered the news as a victory for democracy here.

Hotel attack send explosive message

Anti-U.S. guerrillas attacked the main center for foreign journalists in Iraq yesterday, detonating three car or truck bombs outside the heavily defended Palestine and Sheraton hotels and reportedly killing from 10 to 20 people. In what appeared to be the most sophisticated, determined attack on journalists in the 31-month-old war, the bombers failed to reach the hotels' walls, and instead killed policemen on guard or Iraqi civilians walking in the square outside.

Slaying clouds Hussein trial

The body of a defense lawyer in the trial of Saddam Hussein was found dumped on a roadside in Baghdad Friday, raising new doubts about whether Iraq's U.S.-backed special tribunal can hold fair and credible trials of Hussein and his former aides. The defense lawyers called for the trial, which opened Wednesday and is set to resume in late November, to be delayed further or moved overseas.

Saddam trial lawyer kidnapped; editor slain

Groups of gunmen kidnapped a defense lawyer in the Saddam Hussein trial last night and killed a top Iraqi newspaper editor, just as police were helping free an Irish reporter abducted the day before.

Unprecedented trial of Hussein grips Iraqis

Iraq put Saddam Hussein on trial for mass murder yesterday. The televised image of a dictator demoted to defendant gripped millions across Iraq and the Arab world, who for decades could never have imagined such a thing. Across the country, Iraqis halted normal business to watch on television screens as muscular Iraqi guards in bulletproof vests escorted Hussein into a tightly secured courtroom built in one of the elaborate palaces from which he used to rule the country.

After quake, politics take a blow

Better than most people, Pakistanis know that a natural disaster often brings political change. In 1971, after Pakistan's military government responded slowly to catastrophic flooding in East Pakistan, the population soon rebelled and seceded as the new nation of Bangladesh.

Pakistan village faces hard road to recovery

Helicopters, cargo planes and trucks converged on the shattered city of Muzaffarabad yesterday, hauling all manner of assistance for victims of Saturday's earthquake. From their mountaintop village a half-mile above the city, the villagers of Anwar Sharif could watch it arrive.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Pakistanis cope at epicenter of death, despair

Since the earthquake Saturday that pulverized this town, Nurullah Khan has been caring for an injured nephew under a leaky canvas tarp stretched over the concrete bleacher of a soccer field. Still, he is a lucky man.

Quake survivors struggle against cold

Pakistan's army and international relief agencies delivered a first trickle of food, medicine and tents yesterday to some areas shattered by Saturday's earthquake, but most of the devastated region remained isolated behind barriers of rockslides and broken bridges.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Nightmare grows worse each hour

The earthquake that jolted Pakistan on Saturday overwhelmed it yesterday.

Stricken allege shoddy buildings

When the earth's crust popped six miles below this village surrounded by steep, pine-studded mountains, the ground vibrated like a tuning fork. In an instant, the main classroom building at the girls' high school crumbled into tons of stone and concrete rubble.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

Devastating, deadly quake

A violent earthquake jolted Pakistan and its South Asian neighbors yesterday morning, crushing mountain villages and toppling buildings in cities. More than 18,000 people were reported killed.

Amid ruin, a desperate search for survivors

Residents of this modern capital had eaten the traditional predawn meal yesterday before the daytime fast observed in this Islamic month of Ramadan, and many had gone back to sleep for a few hours. At 8:50 a.m., the earth shook for about a full minute, jolting many people awake.

One prisoner's story

When Dr. Mohammed Ali Shah came home from exile, a convoy of well-wishers met him on the mountain road from Kabul and draped flower garlands around his neck. They flocked to greet the son of one of Gardez's most prominent families, and celebrate the fact that professionals and entrepreneurs were returning to rebuild this disheveled, dusty town after 25 years of war.

Afghans go to polls

Afghans voted yesterday in their first parliamentary elections since 1969, virtually completing the formation of a national government to replace the militant Muslim Taliban regime.

Vote raises hope, uncertainty

The first parliamentary election in 32 years Sunday has given pro-democracy campaigners here much to celebrate.

REPORT FROM PAKISTAN

An unheard voice in Pakistan

In 2000, when President Pervez Musharraf ordered localities to reserve a third of seats on their councils for women, it felt to Shad Begum like progress for women's rights in the remote Dir Valley of northwest Pakistan. Shad, a social worker for women, won a seat in her district and prepared to push the local government to improve health care and education.

Saudi King Fahd dies; half-brother takes over

Saudi Arabia's King Fahd died yesterday and was succeeded by his half-brother, Abdullah, ending a handover of power that began a decade ago. Fahd was 82 and had been in decline since a 1995 stroke. Abdullah is 81.

Pakistan to expel foreign students in madrassas

President Pervez Musharraf conceded Friday that his crackdown on religious extremists had been restrained by his relative political weakness in past years, but said he now feels strong enough to launch a far more effective campaign.

Musharraf decries blame, vows to crush militants

President Pervez Musharraf renewed a declaration of war against violent Muslim militants in Pakistan yesterday, but defended his country against what he said was unjustified blame for the July 7 bombings in London.

Terrorist camps thriving

As President Pervez Musharraf renews his crackdown on Muslim militant factions after this month's terrorist bombings in London, new evidence has emerged that Pakistan has continued to let such groups run military-style camps to train guerrilla fighters.

Arrests sweep Pakistan

As the signs grow that this month's bombings in London may have been organized partly in Pakistan, the government of President Pervez Musharraf is broadening a crackdown on Muslim militant groups it once helped sponsor. Police detained as many as 50 men yesterday in a fourth day of searches and raids, many of them part of the bombing investigation.

REPORTS FROM PAKISTAN

London blasts felt in Pakistani town

In a Pakistan unsettled by growing questions about the role of its people in last week's bombings in London, no place is more troubled than this oddly British town.

Fears of violence in Pakistan

As news emerged yesterday that there were more Pakistani links to last week's bombings in London, people here voiced fears of a backlash against their country and the government hurried to underscore its cooperation with British investigators.

Child burnings increase in Afghanistan

One night last month, when the lamp in Hazrat Khan'svillage home ran low on kerosene, his wife and daughters began to refill it from a jug. The lamp exploded. "It burned the whole room, and they ran out, burning and screaming," Khan recalled.

A bitter lesson in capitalism

Early each morning, hundreds of street kids - the trash-pickers, beggars, water-carriers and taxi touts - pile through the gates of a slightly rundown school. They arrive like children: shouting, shy, curious, nervous. And like survivors of war: thin, ill-dressed, wary and often hungry.

Blast at mosque kills 20

A bombing in a Kandahar mosque killed at least 20 people yesterday, including a top Afghan police official, in the latest and deadliest of a wave of attacks that has underscored Afghanistan's volatility despite U.S. efforts to stabilize the country.

Aid worker kidnapped in Kabul

Gunmen kidnapped an Italian aid worker last night in a central district of the Afghan capital, the latest in a series of attacks that has shaken the foreign community here.

Issue lives on despite reversal

In Afghanistan, where a Newsweek story on Guantanamo Bay helped ignite riots that killed 15 people last week, the story's collapse yesterday brought disbelief. In its chaotic moment on the world stage, the image of U.S. soldiers throwing a Quran into a toilet has strained and muddled America's relations with Muslim Asia.

Islam's growing U.S. rift

Muslims from the Mediterranean to the Pacific protested Friday over the reported desecration of the Quran by a U.S. soldier at Guantanamo Bay. In Afghanistan, where anti-American riots began three days ago, at least seven people were reported killed, doubling the death toll from the violence.

Afghans protest over Quran abuse

Angry young Afghans protested both violently and peacefully Thursday against U.S. policies, broadening what is the first anti-American upheaval since U.S. troops arrived here in 2001. A day after rioting in the eastern city of Jalalabad, protests spread to at least four more localities, and three people were killed.

Anti-U.S. riot in Afghanistan

The eastern city of Jalalabad erupted yesterday in the worst anti-American riot since U.S. troops arrived in Afghanistan in late 2001. Four Afghans died as mobs stoned U.S. troops and smashed foreign consulates, aid agency offices, government buildings and local shops.

REPORT FROM THAILAND

An insurgency in Thailand

As shouting Thai army soldiers beat and kicked Nubhan Matkoseng on Oct. 25, he tried not to cry out, because "if you screamed or called for help, they would beat you more," he said.

UN fires Afghan monitor

Under U.S. pressure, the United Nations this week eliminated the job of its top investigator on human rights in Afghanistan after the official criticized violations by U.S. forces in the country.

It's another rocker

A huge undersea earthquake jolted Southeast Asia last night, sending coastal residents fleeing in fear of a tsunami like the one that devastated Indian Ocean nations three months ago. Hundreds, if not thousands, were thought to have died on an Indonesian island not far from the epicenter of the December disaster.

Iran’s rising deadly force

When Abdulrahim Raeesi, an Iranian political science professor, wrote in an underground newspaper that Iran needs more democracy, men from the Ministry of Intelligence and Security soon found him. They arrested and tortured him, so badly, he said, that he had to be hospitalized.

Threat of civil war grows in Pakistan province

In the center of this dusty town's only real intersection, Pakistani paramilitary troops peer out from a thick, round tower of sandbags, training machine guns on the main streets. Other government soldiers watch the town from fortified nests on the adjacent hilltops.

Pakistan storm toll rises

A newly built dam collapsed under heavy rain waters Friday in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 135 people, officials said. At least 100 people reportedly have died in recent days amid the country's heaviest rains in more than a decade.

World textile industry facing double-edged sword under deregulation

Set behind high walls, away from the choking dust and traffic of this city's streets, the green, manicured campus of Nishat Mills declares that this is one of Pakistan's wealthiest, most sophisticated companies. So does its client list, for the acres of freshly woven cloth stacked in Nishat's gleaming warehouses are destined to become shirts or bedsheets on the shelves of Sears, J.C. Penney or The Gap.

MAKING ENEMIES INSTEAD OF FRIENDS

Afghans, human rights investigators say killing of civilians undermines support for U.S.

On Sept. 24, U.S. soldiers burst into the Khan family's darkened home at 2 a.m., pointing rifle barrels and dazzling lights as they shouted commands. Muhammad Rais Khan, an English teacher and computer specialist, woke, enraged.

THE WORLD REACTS

World reacts to Bush's re-election

At Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, high in the mountainous Khyber Pass, Pakistani passport inspector Ahmed Wajar altered his routine questioning on Tuesday evening when an American driver pulled up and handed over his identity papers.

FIGHTING TALIBAN

Issue of border loyalty

In the predawn dark Sept. 1, about 200 armed men charged in from Pakistan, firing rockets and rifles at this mountaintop military base. Beating off the attack, "we killed three of them and captured one," said Sakhi Rahman, the Afghan post's commander. "They were all Pakistani."