Two thousand Northern Alliance troops and two dozen tank crews gathered expectantly on a treeless, dirt-covered hillside early Monday morning and waited for their visitor.
Standing in neat formations, the uniformed troops were ready for inspection.
PHOTO: REUTERS
A Toyota Land Cruiser with tinted windows appeared about 9:30am and officers called the soldiers to attention. Abdullah Abdullah, the alliance's designated foreign minister, and Yunos Qanoni, its interior minister, stepped out of the vehicle first, followed by a short, squat man in civilian clothes who appeared ill at ease.
General Muhammad Fahim, the new chief of the alliance forces, had arrived to inspect his troops.
Holding his hands against his thighs as he walked, and tripping over rocks, Fahim inspected the first group of troops. Making little eye contact with the men, he broke off the inspection before reaching the end of the line, ignoring an entire unit of soldiers.
All along the line, soldiers held posters of the man whom Fahim is struggling to replace: Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated in early September.
"We will have to wait centuries to find a mother who can bear us like Massoud," said a banner in front of a makeshift dais where senior leaders had gathered.
During the next several months, Fahim and the other senior alliance leaders could help shape the US military campaign in Afghanistan. They could help decide whether to launch and how to conduct an offensive to take Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif or another strategic city -- a move that could give the US a badly needed first victory before winter.
And they will either seize upon or squander the US aid and expertise that will be showered on them in an effort to make the alliance a more viable military force.
Fahim, a longtime aide of Massoud, clearly had a rough start on Monday morning. After the awkward inspection, he never spoke to the troops. Instead, the local commanding general and the alliance's president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, spoke.
"I don't know why he didn't give a speech," said Anwari, one of the senior commanders who gathered here on Monday. "The main reason must be that he respects the president."
The general may yet prove to be a good strategist and tactician. Perhaps his real skills will prove to be in planning attacks, not chatting to soldiers. But it was evident on Monday that he lacks the weapon his predecessor used to help hold together the fractious alliance: charisma.
A fair measure of his performance may emerge here soon. Alliance officials have been sending mixed signals about whether their soldiers will attack here, just 50km north of Kabul.
After Monday's exercise, Abdullah, the foreign minister, announced that alliance forces were ready to attack, with an offensive now purely a political decision.
"We don't need any other time for preparation," he said. "Today's situation showed that we have reached that level that we need to reach before an operation."
After two days of preliminary exercises, Monday's training consisted of soldiers mostly standing in formation, listening to leaders' speeches and watching groups of soldiers sing and read militaristic songs and poems. The only live-fire training involved 100 soldiers, a half-dozen armored personnel carriers and several tanks carrying out what a military officer called "a mock assault on a terrorist base."
Squads of 10 soldiers slowly advanced up a hill as the tanks and armored vehicles fired at a small bunker perched on top of it. Most shells fired at the stationary target missed. After the soldiers reached the first hilltop bunker, the armored vehicles began firing on a second one, but that attack ended abruptly without soldiers advancing up the hill.
A group of soldiers carrying a stretcher headed up the first slope and disappeared. Later in the day, rumors circulated that a soldier had been accidentally killed in the exercise, but the account could not be confirmed.
Fahim, questioned by a group of reporters after the exercise, was circumspect about his plans. Asked whether the exercise was preparation for an attack, he said, "It is just a military preparation that shows our highest level of readiness for taking action."
Asked if he would take action soon, he said, "We are prepared, but it will depend on our strategy." And asked what his strategy was, he said, "It will depend on the circumstances, the weather, and lots of other circumstances."
Declining further comment, he climbed into his Land Cruiser and left.
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