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"Are you sure, or are they just saying that?" asks Hassan with a laugh. He surveys the battlefield, constantly kneading his prayer beads. His troops are meeting heavier resistance on the left flank. As they get out of their APC to try an assault, they are met with a crackle of AK-47 fire.
At 4:10, after absorbing 50 min. of hard pounding, the Taliban troops suddenly start shelling Hassan's command post with a Russian artillery piece that had been hidden on the left flank. "They are like dogs. They never give up. They must be Arabs," says Hassan. He orders his tanks to aim at the artillery piece, but it keeps shooting back, each shell getting closer to Hassan's position. The closest round lands 25 yds. from the trench before some soldiers--and the handful of journalists observing them--withdraw.
Hassan stays at his post, calling for reinforcements and correcting the coordinates for the artillery piece that is holding up his advance. On the third attack, his men use light artillery to take out the left bunker and find six dead Arab fighters inside. As night falls, the Alliance takes Chagatai ridge, but at a cost of six dead and 30 wounded. The Taliban again proves it will not give up without a fight.
--By Terry McCarthy/Chagatai