Blood, tears, terror and tragedy behind the lines
By Robert Fisk, the only Western journalist in Taliban-held Kandahar province

So this is what it's like to be on the losing side in the American-Afghan bloodbath. Everywhere it was the same story of desperation and terror and courage. An American F-18 soared above us as a middle-aged man approached me with angry eyes. "This is what you wanted, isn't it?'' he screamed. "Sheikh Osama is an excuse to do this to the Islamic people.''

I pleaded with yet another Taliban fighter ­ a 35-year-old man with five children called Jamaldan ­ to honour his government's promise to get me to Kandahar. He looked at me pityingly. "How can I get you there,'' he asked, "when we can hardly protect ourselves?''

The implications are astonishing. The road from the Iranian border town of Zabul to Kandahar has been cut by Afghan gunmen and US special forces. The Americans were bombing civilian traffic and the Taliban on the road to Spin Boldak, and Northern Alliance troops were firing across the highway. Takhta-Pul was under fire from American guns and besieged by the Alliance. Kandahar was being surrounded.
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Warlord Nation
While the U.N. haggles, Afghan fighters are carving the nation up for themselves as the hunt for bin Laden goes on

From Mazar-e Sharif in the north and Herat in the west to Jalalabad in the east, bands of looting and pillaging mujahedin have set to bickering among themselves, like so many lions worrying over too little kill. And many U.N. officials and aid workers expect them to start ripping out each other’s throats at any moment. Security in most of the country is so bad that the United Nations and most nongovernmental organizations refuse to return, even to areas they had regularly visited even just a year ago, in the middle of the Taliban’s shooting war. And when the Northern Alliance tried to extend its writ farther last week, into areas held by tribal mujahedin and remaining Taliban allies, around Maidan Shahr, just under 20 miles from the capital, they were not only beaten back at first, but gave up some ground in the retreat.
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Israel

Mideast peace may need more than a 'Few Good Men,' it may need new Israeli, PA leaders

As a leatherneck ex-general waded into one of the world's toughest theaters of battle - Israeli-Palestinian truce talks - there were indications America might have to wait for both Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to pass from the scene before a lasting peace can ever be forged.

New U.S. Middle East peace envoy Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general well-versed in thorny mediation, faces a formidable boot camp in his first crack at persuading the prime minister and the Palestinian Authority chairman to agree to steps aimed at quelling 14 months of nonstop bloodshed.

With the militant Islamic Hamas aching to avenge Israel's weekend assassination of its top military commander Mahmoud Abu Hanoud - an urge underscored by a Monday suicide bombing in Gaza that killed the attacker and wounded two Israeli Border Policemen - Sharon pointedly reiterated his bottom-line demand for a week of absolute calm before any Israeli implementation of the Mitchell Commission recommendations for an Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who dispatched his old comrade-in-arms Zinni to the Middle East, has strongly hinted that Sharon's pre-condition of seven days of quiet is one of the obstacles blocking the path back to the negotiating table.
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