A Different Vantage

By Paul Quinn-Judge/Jabal-Us-Seraj

The Taliban likes to portray itself as just, resolute and pure. But accounts coming out of Kabul these days depict it in a very different light--as corrupt, abusive and, with expectations of a U.S. attack mounting, increasingly vindictive. Dust-caked refugees fleeing the capital say streets are sealed off and soldiers go from house to house, press-ganging men of military age. "There is a jihad against the Americans going on. Why aren't you fighting?" the Taliban asked Kandaqa, a worker from Kabul, last week. He pledged his house as surety, then collected his family and fled across the mountains.

Northern Alliance officials continue to paint a rosy picture of a regime on the verge of collapse. Over cups of tea in their calm command posts or in small mud houses near the dozy front, they assure visitors that Taliban morale is nosediving, that desertions are widespread. Checking such assertions can be bewildering. A group of journalists spent a day looking for the sole confirmed deserter on the Kabul front, and at first they were told he could not be reached because he was at the front line working the radios, calling on his former colleagues to surrender. Many hours later, he was tracked down in a bazaar. He, the commander to whom he had surrendered and a dozen or so other fighters had poured themselves into a taxi to go off and do some shopping. The deserter turned out to be a shopkeeper from northern Afghanistan named Khan Jan who had been conscripted three months earlier.

There are some serious people in the Northern Alliance, however, and their picture of the Taliban is more sobering. These people--intelligence officers, security officials and spies--do not think the Taliban resistance in Kabul will collapse at the first U.S. salvo. A Northern Alliance fighter who has viewed the Taliban up close is Saif, a tense, nervy man in his 30s who is a spy for one of the alliance commanders. When he was interviewed last week, he had just spent 10 days or so in Kabul assessing Taliban strength.

The Taliban has at least 4,000 hardened fighters in the city, Saif says. Their commander is Mullah Obaidullah, the Defense Minister. Obaidullah is a formidable adversary, says Mohammed Aref, chief of staff of a regiment on the front line facing Kabul. Officials and soldiers on this side who are in contact with the Taliban--spies, escapees or front-line officers who sometimes talk to their opponents by radio--say their enemy's morale is higher than Northern Alliance spokesmen would like to believe. The Taliban reaction to the attacks in the U.S. was a mixture of jubilation and fatalism, Northern Alliance officials say. "At last we have f____d the Americans" were the words Khan Jan recalled hearing. This mood was replaced briefly, in Kabul at least, by panic at the first talk of anticipated U.S. strikes. Then after four days or so, Northern Alliance intelligence officials say, the Taliban recovered its composure and returned to the task of defending the city.

All along the Kabul front, Taliban fighters repeat the same line with apparent conviction: they are fighting for two great champions of Islam--Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. During a radio exchange on a front west of Kabul, a local Taliban commander told Khademudin, his childhood playmate and now the enemy commander in the area, that "bin Laden is a guest of Afghanistan who has sacrificed much for the country." Khan Jan recalls a recent radio address by Mullah Omar. "If we die, that is fine," the mullah said, "but we will never give him up." A Northern Alliance security official offered a similar assessment: "Mullah Omar is simple and brave. He is convinced he is right, and he believes that whether he lives or dies is the will of Allah."

Meanwhile, the Northern Alliance is focusing its attention on a time-honored Afghan tradition--trying to entice the opposing commanders to switch sides. Carefully lowering his considerable bulk onto cushions spread around the floor--most Northern Alliance commanders are at least four clothes sizes larger than the rank and file--General Abdul Rahim Abdurahim explains how it works. He has been sending envoys to Kabul to meet with generals who switched sides before the Taliban victory in 1996. It is going well, and they are keen to rejoin the Northern Alliance, he assures us. It is just a matter of time.