Chagatai Dispatch: Eyewitness to a Northern Alliance Assault

The attack on Chagatai ridge begins at 3:20 p.m. local time on Saturday, when General Moammar Hassan of the Northern Alliance shouts into his radio, "Advance forwards. We are ready to start the war now." Twenty yards to the left of the command bunker where he stands, a T-55 tank opens up with its main gun, and the assault is on. Northern Alliance artillery shells and 82-mm mortars whiz overhead as a 50-cal. gun pops individual rounds at Taliban front lines, 1,000 yds. away across a small dip in the rolling brown hills.

This attack with several hundred troops is...

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