As many as 80 fighters aligned with the former mujahedeen commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who once battled Soviet occupation but has now joined forces with the remnants of the Taliban to oust the Americans, were thought to be lodged in caves and mountain hideouts near the border with Pakistan, said the spokesman, Col. Roger King.
But the major pipelines running south from the refinery in Bayji and from Kirkuk go through Sunni regions that are strongholds for guerrillas battling the foreign occupation.
The militant wing is led from Pakistan by Hezb-i-Islami's founder, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who first rose to prominence as an American and Pakistani proxy battling the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
But in an equally significant way, Mr. Allawi signaled that he was prepared to reach an accommodation with many of those, including the former Baathists, who have been battling the American occupation.
Named for a Syrian who was killed in 1935 while battling the British occupation of what was then known as Palestine, the brigades made their first strike on Jan . 1 , 1992killing a rabbi in the former Kfar Darom settlement, not far from here.
When the Afghan fighters known as mujahadeen were battling the decade-long occupation by the Soviet Union, they used the area as a staging ground for attacks and were rarely chased across the border by Soviet forces.
Many of its members — Syrians, Iraqis and a few from other countries —fought in Iraq, where the Syrian government helped funnel jihadis to battle the American occupation.
For example, immigrants once affiliated with organizations that battled the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan or took up arms against the Sudanese government, both efforts the United States was sympathetic to at one point, have been unable to receive green cards, Ms. Hughes said.
Abdul Rashid Dostum, a vice presidential candidate and a former commander of Afghan forces that battled the Soviet occupation, tweeted: "We are very saddened that a veteran journalist Ahmad Sardar along with his wife lost their lives in Serena hotel attack.
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