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Taliban defections often as simple as changing turbans

The advice came crackling over a radio, from a Northern Alliance foxhole on a high, dusty ridge over northeastern Afghanistan: "You should give up."

Fifty kilometers away, an Afghan Taliban commander at the besieged, Taliban-held city of Kunduz answered immediately.

"Stay on this frequency -- I will let you know," he said.

Defections, even in mid-battle, are proving key to the Taliban army's rapid collapse across Afghanistan -- and are nowhere more a matter of life and death than in the city of Kunduz, in a valley north of Kabul.

Northern Alliance commanders are pledging full-scale attack on the city unless Afghan Talibans holed up there switch sides.

For the foreign fighters linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, making a last stand in Kunduz after retreating from across the north, there would be only death, Northern Alliance commanders made clear.

"We do not want civilian casualties," the key Northern Alliance commander in the fight, Daoud, said.

"So we invite the Taliban] people to join our side."

In Afghanistan, defections are a time-honored military practice -- a pragmatic way for soldiers to stave off inevitable slaughter by a stronger enemy, and to save themselves.

Changing loyalties is as simple -- and as accepted -- as changing turbans, and in the front lines, yesterday's Taliban is today's anti-Taliban fighter.

"He used to be one of the Taliban. He annoyed everyone," a Kalashnikov-toting Northern Alliance fighter said, pointing out one of his comrades lounging by the side of a dusty road leading to the Kunduz front.

The ex-Taliban, now in the brown felt beret-like turban worn by many Northern Alliance fighters, smiled.

In Taloqan, the largest city east of Kunduz, the man had been one of the Taliban who roamed the streets with a stick, hitting women and others whose conduct he deemed at odds with Taliban ways, the fighters said.

When the Taliban surrendered Taloqan between last Sunday and Tuesday, many Taliban fled to Kunduz -- while others, like the Northern Alliance's newest recruit, simply took off their white-and-black Taliban turbans, put on a new hat, and joined up with the alliance.

The Taliban-turned-anti-Taliban was a very poor man now, his new comrades said, seeming to take some pleasure in the man's discomfiture.
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