Rebel's escape leaves Taliban facing revolt

"Karzai is a brave man. He is working in a difficult place. And he is dicing with death"

Source familiar with both the Taliban and opposition

The Taliban's leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was on Friday night facing the uncomfortable prospect of rebellion deep in his own heartland after his troops yesterday failed to capture an opposition commander who had slipped into Afghanistan on a clandestine pro-US mission.

The Pastun tribal leader Hamid Karzai had managed to escape his Taliban pursuers who ambushed him two days ago in the remote central province of Oruzgan, his supporters said. He was now organizing a revolt against the Taliban and was being protected by disaffected villagers, they added.

Karzai, a supporter and distant relative of Afghanistan's deposed king, Zahir Shah, entered Taliban territory three weeks ago. Before setting off on his dangerous mission he made little secret of his aims: to spark off an insurrection against the Taliban in the south, and rally support among his fellow tribesmen for the exiled king.

On Thursday night the Taliban announced that they had ambushed Karzai's party in Deh Rawod, Oruzgan's south-western tip and were pursuing him across jagged mountains and irrigated valleys.

If captured, Karzai can expect the same bloody treatment as Abdul Haq, the opposition commander who was ambushed and then executed by the Taliban on a similar mission last week. Yesterday one of Karzai's supporters insisted that he was alive and well. He had been short of food but was now being provided for by local people.

"Things are moving now. Hamid told me the tribes were joining him and that he had a lot of support. They are mobilizing for a revolt within days," Zalmai Rassoul, an aide to the exiled king, said from Rome. The Taliban had killed one of Karzai's men and wounded another in Thursday's shoot-out, he added.

But the Taliban last night appeared confident they were closing in -- and claimed to have arrested 25 of Karzai's supporters. Several of the leaders would now be hanged, the Taliban information ministry official, Qari Fazil Rabi, said.

"Hamid Karzai and his companions fled to the mountains and two of their men were killed in the operation. We are chasing them now. We believe that American helicopters brought Karzai and his people to the area most probably, as it is difficult to get there," he added.

For the Pentagon, which has had little to celebrate over the past four weeks, the stakes could not be higher. Karzai, the leader of the Kandahar-based Popalzai tribe, belongs to the same ethnic group as the Taliban, the Pastun. If the Taliban capture and kill him the US's attempts to create a broad-based post-Taliban administration will have ended in horrible failure.

If, Karzai manages to stir up a Pastun rebellion in the south, however, the Taliban could be in genuine trouble for the first time, encircled by hostile tribesman from their own ethnic groups, and the US-assisted opposition in the north.

"Oruzgan is where Mullah Omar and many key Taliban commanders came from. A lot of people from there have been heavily involved in the Islamic Emirate project," one source said last night. "We always said that if the Taliban ever had a last stand they would have it there in south Oruzgan. Instead they are having their first stand there."

"Karzai is a brave man. He is working in a difficult place. And he is dicing with death," he added.

With its profoundly isolated valleys and harsh terrain, Oruzgan is the kind of place where it is easy to disappear. Osama bin Laden has a small base in Oruzgan, to where he has retreated in the past. The Taliban could balk at sending bin Laden's Arab fighters to crush fellow Pastuns, one observer said.

Karzai's family yesterday said he was better armed than Abdul Haq. The US, which failed to rescue Haq, might try harder this time to pluck Karzai from danger.

A deputy foreign minister in Afghanistan's 1992 to 1994 mujahidin government, Karzai, 46, was an early supporter of the Taliban movement. But his enthusiasm ebbed when he realized that the Taliban were not merely interested in bringing peace, but also wanted to turn Afghanistan into a laboratory for their extremist Islamist beliefs.

His antipathy deepened two years ago when suspected Taliban assassins killed his father in Peshawar, Pakistan possibly with the connivance of the country's intelligence agency, the ISI.

A formal emissary of 87-year-old Zahir Shah, Karzai wants to convene a loya jirga or great council, the traditional mechanism by which Afghanistan's fissiparous ethnic groups would iron out their differences.

While a loya jirga might be acceptable to many Afghan tribal leaders it remains a quixotic goal with the Taliban still in power.

With Taliban troops in pursuit, Karzai's fate is in the balance. The reward for success could be a top ministerial role in Afghanistan's next government. But the penalty for failure is summary trial and a bullet in the head.