According to Sebastian Junger they are fierce warriors and know the terrain like the back of their hand.
For Afghan Fighters, a Tangled Web of Loyalties
Afghan Northern Alliance soldiers on the front line against Taliban forces. (AFP)
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 25, 2001; Page A01
KHALOZAI, Afghanistan, Sept. 24 -- The commander of the rebel post strode into his communications center after a night of shelling, in this case an 8-by-8-foot hovel with an assault rifle hanging from the mud wall and a Japanese two-way radio hooked up to a Japanese car battery.
He flipped a switch to change frequencies, pressed a button and asked for Oriyon.
"How are you?" the commander asked when the other man came on the line.
"I'm okay."
"Are all of your friends okay?"
"Yes, all of my friends are okay."
Said Rafiq smiled. Oriyon was not one of his lieutenants, but his opposite number, a commander of Taliban forces that Rafiq's guerrillas have been fighting for five years. It turned out that Oriyon and Rafiq hail from the same village, have known each other for years, even fought beside one another until Oriyon defected to the other side about two years ago.
"He was my friend," Rafiq explained simply. "But now he is my enemy."
Such is the nature of conflict in Afghanistan. Chat over the radio by day; lob mortar shells at each other by night. After 22 years of constant warfare, Afghanistan has evolved into a web of loyalties and hatreds almost indecipherable to outsiders.
The United States will have to navigate these tribal rivalries as it moves to oust the Taliban militia, a radical Islamic movement that rules most of Afghanistan and has sheltered suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. As the radio exchange between the rebel commander and his friend to the south suggests, local allegiances cross the current battle lines. If the American forces support the rebels in the north, the Taliban could be vulnerable to defections of the same fighters who joined it in earlier years.
A visit to the front lines just north of Kabul reveals not just the complicated tapestry of ethnic, religious and personal differences but also the military stalemate it has yielded. Soldiers on both sides have dug into positions that have not moved substantially for two years. A strange sort of acclimation has taken hold as civilians wander through ostensibly dangerous zones with no hint of tension or worry. The soldiers do more talking than fighting.
At the mud fort commanded by Rafiq, just 30 miles from Kabul, two tanks have been encased in earthen walls, rendered immobile for use essentially as artillery pieces. Rafiq has also built himself a mud garage for his Russian-made jeep and settled into a routine of small-scale action, at most.
In the early morning darkness today, he said, he fired two 81mm mortars from his desert base for an hour. The spent shells were still lying next to the guns a few hours later, the dirt stained black from the powder. But Rafiq seemed unworried about any attacks, standing atop one of the tanks, presenting an easy target if Taliban troops were near enough -- and so inclined to try.
Like many fighters, he seemed to be waiting for the Americans, anticipating that a U.S. attack would finally clear the way to Kabul.
"It's a good idea for Americans to come into Afghanistan," said the 25-year-old commander. "I hope Americans can destroy Osama bin Laden. I hope to see American soldiers in Kabul."
A few miles to the east, the top officers for the rebels' southern front expressed similar anticipation. In Bagram, the farthest-forward rebel position, Gen. Babajan, who like many Afghans uses just one name, said his lines had not changed in two years but he hopes now to ride into Kabul to liberate it from the Taliban with U.S. help.
"When the Americans attack by bombing Afghanistan, we'll progress," he said, sitting cross-legged in his stocking feet in a small room at his base. Referring to the Taliban, he added: "We will destroy all of them. After that, we hope security will come to Afghanistan. This has been continuing in my country for 25 years. My country is poor. Many people are disabled. We hope that security will come to Afghanistan."
"If the Americans had started action two years ago, they would have destroyed terrorism in other countries by now," added Babajan's brother, Mirakhman, another rebel commander. "When the Americans attack, God willing, we will go to Kabul."
Babajan said the Taliban has renewed fighting on the southern front in the two weeks since the rebels' celebrated military commander, Ahmed Shah Massoud, was mortally wounded and the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked by hijackers believed to be affiliated with bin Laden.
But on this front line, neither side has made any forward movement. In two weeks of fighting, Babajan said, just two of his 2,000 troops have been killed; he asserted that 14 had died on the other side.
A few hours later, after pitch-black night fell, more gun and artillery fire could be heard from the direction of Bagram, heavier than the night before.
In the northern part of Afghanistan, rebel leaders said today that one of the alliance's strongest commanders, ethnic Uzbek warlord Abdurrashid Dostum, had captured the town of Tokzar, which could give the rebels a clear path to attempt to retake the strategic city of Mazar-e Sharif. The Taliban's capture of Dostum's fortress and airfield in Mazar-e Sharif led him to leave the country in 1997; now he is back seeking to avenge that defeat.
While fighting in the south has been relatively quiet, the territory around Bagram testifies to plenty of damage. Destroyed tanks and other military vehicles lie abandoned and stripped of whatever useful parts may have remained. Many buildings have been reduced to rubble. The road to Bagram is blocked at several locations by large metal shipping containers, so vehicles simply go off the road.
Bridges have been blown out as well, with makeshift replacements fashioned out of sheet metal that hardly looks strong enough to support the weight of passing jeeps. At one bridge, the better part of valor dictates traversing the shallow river in an off-road vehicle rather than trying to cross the shelled bridge.
Soldiers heading to or from the front said their morale was high and that they looked forward to finally moving beyond the impasse that has dominated the war here for so long.
"The situation at Bagram is good," said Saifor Rakhman, 29, a gun slung over his shoulder, as he walked along the road in a group that included a man carrying a grenade launcher. "It's been quiet for a long time."
A 27-year-old tank commander who gave his name as Jalali did not expect that to last much longer. Driving along the road, with a small boy riding atop his tank, Jalali said he placed his hopes in one direction: Washington. "I hope the Americans bomb," he said, because then the war would finally be over.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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