Pech River News Today

New Taliban administration is still figuring out how to take advantage of the presence underground of the mineral

Sayed Wali Sajid spent years fighting American soldiers in the barren hills and fertile fields of the Pech River Valley, one of the deadliest theaters of the 20-year insurgency.

Link Copied The soldiers living in the concrete maze of Combat Outpost (COP) Michigan treated the Taliban fire that poured in from the mountains as though it were weather: Bursts of machine-gun bullets were akin to drizzle, volleys of rocket-propelled grenades more like heavy rain. “It might not be worth going out into that,” a tall, blond soldier remarked to a colleague, after the thump of an explosion on the compound kicked off a firefight as the outpost’s mortars shot back into the clo...