Two hundred American soldiers and civilians crossed the start line yesterday at a dusty airstrip in a Taliban stronghold to run Afghan-istan's first ever marathon.
Gun racks and fox holes as well as plastic palm trees dotted the course for the satellite race to the more orthodox Honolulu Mara-thon, with runners facing the challenge of high altitude and a bumpy course as well as the risk of rebel attack.
The race, which begins several hours before 20,000 people ran in Honolulu, was the idea of the US Army's 2nd Battalion, 5th Infantry Regiment, based at Schofield Barracks near Honolulu, who didn't want to miss out.
Tapes of Hawaiian music blared as competitors, decked out in black T-shirts, set off from between two cannons on five laps of the landing strip at Firebase Ripley, just outside Tirin Kot, 120km from the southern Afghan city of Kandahar and 1,400m above sea level.
"I've never run one this high," said Major Dario Baratto of Alexandria, Virginia, a veteran of 11 marathons. "It's a dangerous area, but there's a lot of weapons along the route. There's bunkers in case anything happens."
Helicopters flew soldiers in from other bases across Afghanistan yesterday morning. Two jet fighters roared over the base, surrounded by the mountains of Uruzgan province, just before the race began to the cheers of the assembled runners.
One competitor was a young Afghan working for the military, apparently the first to compete in such a race on Afghan soil.
"This is not an official sport in our country," according to Mo-hammed Aref Payman, an official at the Afghan National Olympic Committee in Kabul. "This has never been done here before."
Some of the course is gravel, but most of it is covered by a fine, powder-like dust mercifully damped down by a rare shower on Saturday. Its single hill has been named Diamond Head for the Honolulu landmark, an extinct volcano whose base runners traverse twice during the marathon.
The runners in Tirin Kot will receive finisher's medals and certificates as well as their sponsored T-shirts, and their finish times will be recorded and listed in a booklet with those of the runners in Honolulu.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS