There will be no martyrdom if it is accomplished by the Northern Alliance warlords. It could end up as complete humiliation and total disgrace if it were done by the Pashtuns. Yikes!, that would be such a nightmare. It would even make those militant Pakistani Muslim clerics wish they can crawl back to their mothers' wombs and be reborn.
An important part of the solution is to allow the Afghans themselves take great deal of responsibility and pride of their accomplishments. Elimination of OBL and Omar should be done by Uzbek Rashid Dostum, Tajik Atta Mohammed, and Shia Hazaras Ustad Mohaqiq. Herat's Ismail Khan may hold the wildcard and become the supreme and most honored warrior of them all.
By the way, where is Omar? Haven't heard a peep for a week. Already left the country, with many of the al-Qa'eda?
You are correct, there is still a lot of work to be done - flushing out and eradicating the networks. At least, that's where the efforts can be concentrated on. Getting rid of Osama-Omar by the Afghans would help reduce the jihad fervor and may significantly reduce support of the al-qa'eda network.
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'Now the South must rise up'
By David Rennie in Dasht-e-Qal'he, Alan Philps in Jabal os-Saraj and Ben Fenton (Filed: 12/11/2001)
portal.telegraph.co.uk
THE Northern Alliance claimed sweeping victories across northern Afghanistan last night as the Taliban apparently abandoned stronghold after stronghold and headed south towards the capital Kabul.
Abdullah Abdullah, the alliance's foreign minister, said that the Western-backed forces had seized more than 40 per cent of the country in the 48 hours since the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday.
In Mazar there were reports of men queuing at barbers' shops to shave off the beards the Taliban had forced them to wear.
Music formerly forbidden by the religious police was blaring from shops and some women had cast off their burqas, the reports said.
Last night forces were reported to be on the outskirts of the strategic western city of Herat and preparing to launch a final assault.
Dr Abdullah warned the Taliban that they should evacuate Kabul to avoid another crushing defeat.
Amid reports of Taliban forces fleeing and hundreds killed, Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, called on the Taliban heartland in the South to rise up.
He said in Washington: "The Northern Alliance has had victories and now it is time for the southern tribes to get active."
But he was cautious about the extent of the victories being claimed and stressed that some of the cities the alliance said it had captured were only "under pressure".
While hundreds of Taliban and troops of the al-Qa'eda terrorist network had been killed when Mazar-i-Sharif was captured, it was impossible to say how long the campaign would continue.
He said: "This is a tough, long, grinding, dirty business."
Gen Colin Powell, the secretary of state, said that America would now begin to "encourage" tribal leaders in the Pathan-dominated South. But he did not say how this would be done.
He said: "As we start to encourage those southern tribes, I think they might start deciding that there is a better life to be had by separating themselves from the Taliban and trying to help the Afghan people, rather than keep this repressive, evil regime in place that supports Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda."
In London, Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, confirmed for the first time that British forces were providing front-line support.
He said: "I can certainly confirm that there are members of Britain's armed forces on the ground in northern Afghanistan liaising with the Northern Alliance, providing advice and assistance."
American defence sources have gone further, confirming that special forces have been directing the alliance operations and guiding aircraft to Taliban targets.
Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "The momentum is very much with the international coalition. The Taliban are hurting.
"Their communication has been destroyed. Their lines of supply are being cut off. Their movements are being severely restricted. We are dictating the pace."
Dr Abdullah issued his warning to the Taliban to quit Kabul shortly after an American appeal to the alliance not to occupy the city until agreement had been reached on governing the country.
President Bush said he would ask his "friends" in Afghanistan not to take over Kabul and Gen Powell urged the alliance to "invest" rather than invade the capital.
The alliance's leaders were buoyant after two days of military action following the fall of Mazar, which they said had brought them the control of cities and crossroads on three fronts and allowed them to "reach the gates" of Kabul. They claimed that the Taliban had lost their main fighting force.
The Taliban admitted that they had withdrawn from three northern provinces, but said that this was part of a strategic manoeuvre. They denied losing the city of Taloqan.
Dr Abdullah said that defections had contributed to the rapid collapse of Taliban forces in Taloqan.
He claimed that in the central province of Bamiyan the governor had gone over to the alliance with 8,000 men and blocked the exit of Taliban troops from Mazar.
The alliance's most surprising victories seem to have come in the west, Ismail Khan, a veteran mujahideen, said his troops had captured the town of Qala-i-Nau after a fierce four-hour battle and were now heading toward his former power base of Herat.
That city, one of the largest in the country, is on the main road to Kandahar, the base of Mullah Mohammad Omar, Taliban supreme leader, But there was no word of the reclusive mullah's whereabouts, nor of bin Laden.
On the north-eastern front near Dasht-e-Qal'eh there was confirmation of American caution about premature reports of a complete Taliban collapse.
Despite assurances from local commanders that the Taliban were fleeing, heavy fighting broke out after dark around Chaghatai hill, causing heavy alliance casualties.
A French radio reporter was killed and a second is feared dead after an armoured personnel carrier they were travelling in was hit by Taliban fire.
A third journalist, from the German magazine, Stern, was missing after being seen rolling from the armoured car. An Afghan interpreter was also missing.
Paul McGeough, of the Sydney Morning Herald, who survived, said: "At about 6.30pm Commander Bashir of the Northern Alliance suggested that we go to look at a Taliban trench that had surrendered.
"When we got there, they had not surrendered. Three of us clung on for grim death and we survived."
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How to turn Taliban warlords into allies
(Filed: 10/11/2001)
portal.telegraph.co.uk
By Stephen Masty, director of relief projects in Afghanistan
IF we hope to win the fourth Anglo-Afghan War, we should abandon any notion that Afghans are inhumanly fierce creatures, eager to fight to the last man. Afghans are practical, and Taliban defections are possible.
In 1991, Communists were swept from city after city as the Mujahideen paraded their prisoners-of-war through Peshawar. The victors came from eastern garrisons, from Ghazni to Jalalabad. In contrast, none of their prisoners - miserable, beardless youths in fuzzy Russian uniforms - were easterners. They were Afghan Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkomen or Hazara - minorities from up north.
Where were the Pushtoon soldiers who had fought for the Communists? They were back home with Mum and Dad in neighbouring villages, wearing civilian clothes, with their uniforms safely buried in the back garden.
Local elders had come to their garrisons and spoken to their commanders. "It's agreed. You are going to lose this time," the elders explained, so the local boys went home and called in sick. As a result, many garrisons fell without a shot being fired.
In Afghanistan, kinship outranks political loyalty and even religion. This is good news for the West, which should use this knowledge to encourage defections from the Pushtoon-dominated Taliban.
There are four types of Afghans who might loosely be called Taliban. First, there are the old mullahs of the Taliban ruling council. Second, the teenaged robots programmed in Arab-funded religious training schools in Pakistan.
Both these groups consist of rock-solid ideologues whose version of Islam is very Arabised and therefore essentially foreign to Afghanistan.
Far more numerous are members of the third group: Taliban soldiers such as the scrappily-bearded teenager who, a few years ago, threw his Kalashnikov over his shoulder and swaggered up to me as I changed a tyre on the road out of Kabul.
"My father has a half-acre farm," he told me. "He has 10 children and my mother to feed. I don't want to kill the northerners, but the commander gives me enough to eat. Give me a shovel and a dollar a day, and I will tell the commander to stuff his machinegun."
The fourth group - and the most important - are the middle-aged, veteran commanders from the war against the Russians. They were recruited by the Taliban because the mullahs, the robots and the unemployed cannot command armies. Taliban in name only, these shrewd, battle-scarred men have good career prospects as local warlords in a kinder, gentler, post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's tribal identities, pecking orders and traditions date back to the time of Herodotus. The Soviet Union and the Taliban both tried to destroy this system, which they correctly saw as a bulwark against ideology. Yet it was strong enough to have negotiated the bloodless collapse of Communist cities in Pushtoon areas.
For a Pushtoon, loyalty has more layers than a sticky baklava sweet. You can be a member of a political party but, above all, you belong to a tribe, led by much-loved elders.
You may have one layer of loyalty to your employer, and another through belonging to one of the mystical Sufi sects that venerate saints and their descendants. Your farm may have been rented for centuries from the same family of local khans.
So, if you are a Pushtoon, you will have many ties binding you to friends, neighbours and colleagues. And almost all of them outweigh allegiance to the Taliban mullahs and students, who most Afghans quietly admit are ideological nutters and busybodies.
Key Taliban commanders are likely to defect if they have enough encouragement from their broad circle of loyalty, together with money and guns to protect themselves from Taliban reprisals or the Northern Alliance.
But - and here's the catch - the deal-making must be done by Afghans themselves. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, cannot join a tribe or insinuate his way into the complex skein of relationships that Afghans call a qaum.
So, the West needs Afghans with respectable tribal connections to turn the commanders; then the unemployable will happily follow.
Those two groups, plus their aunts, cousins and in-laws in each qaum, will vastly outnumber (and overrun) the Arabs, the mullahs and the robots.
Before his execution last month, Abdul Haq hoped to do just that, even though he feared that the allied bombings and heavy-handed support for the Northern Alliance would drive those commanders closer to the Taliban.
Haq's brutal lynching, and the narrow escape of the influential monarchist Hamid Kharzai, are indications of how vulnerable the Taliban feel to defections. But internal negotiations cannot be rushed to suit Western political timetables and CNN broadcasts.
We had a face-saving opportunity to scale down the bombings for Ramadan - and we missed it. That does not augur well.
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