A look at Afghanistan's tunnels, caves

By The Associated Press

A look at Afghanistan's tunnels and caves:

– Afghanistan's mountains are filled with thousands of natural caves, most created by water coursing over limestone.

– In ancient times, farmers in eastern and southern Afghanistan built a network of underground irrigation trenches called a karez. The deepest shaft, high on a hill, intersected with the water table underground. Water traveled down through tunnels to farm fields on lower desert plains. Villagers also hid inside the tunnels during invasions.

– During the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, Afghan fighters dug caves in the shafts' sides to hide weapons and people. And Osama bin Laden spent millions to create a network of crisscrossing tunnels and fortified underground bunkers. Some of the bunkers have power supplies and several escape routes, and are large enough to hide weapons or even vehicles, said John F. Shroder Jr., a geology professor at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, who studied Afghanistan's caves until 1978.

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