Wed, Oct 17, 2001 page6

• Lull in fighting gives Talibanbreathing space

  LOOKING AHEAD The fight for the control of Kabul has been deferred indefinitely, awaiting a political deal on what shape a post-Taliban government should take

  • REUTERS
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  A week ago, anti-Taliban commander Mullah Razek was grinning at the front, gleefully directing night fire from 122mm howitzers at Taliban pickup trucks moving up to the line.

  His men, who danced and sang when the first US bombs hit Kabul, were on alert waiting for the order to attack the city.

  Several days later, the front was silent and Razek's command post was manned only by a handful of fighters, most still too young to shave.

  The commander himself was 20km to the rear, at home, hosting his favored lieutenants to a lunch of fried trout.

  The high alert was evidently over.

  The Northern Alliance on the front north of the capital, Kabul, has at last acknowledged what many had long suspected.

  The long-awaited battle for Kabul has been put off indefinitely, pending a search for a political deal on the makeup of a post-Taliban regime.

  Asked on Sunday if the opposition was in a position to move against Kabul, Northern Alliance foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah said for the first time that an advance without a political plan being put in place probably would not happen.

  "Moving towards Kabul will need a political as well as a military solution."

  Alliance leaders are well aware they lack both the firepower or manpower to take Kabul without US air support.

  "This is a very mature decision and shows political wisdom and foresight," said Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid.

  "They have shown a willingness to forsake short-term military gains for long-term political advantages that could be beneficial to the whole nation rather than just to one faction," he said.

  Their frontline commanders had dreamed of US attack planes and helicopters butchering Taliban fighters with cluster bombs, sending the enemy scattering from the trenches, paving the way for an advance on Kabul.

  But US forces have so far conspicuously avoided hitting the Taliban troops -- concentrated in plain view and reinforcing by the day -- in the Shomali valley north of Kabul.

  The Northern Alliance lacks the ability to tackle the Taliban frontline, analysts said.

  "Without US bombing of Taliban frontlines, they would face massive casualties because the Taliban are well dug-in and have 200 tanks, 600 pieces of artillery and some 7,000 to 8,000 troops," Rashid said.

  Pakistan, which actively supported the Taliban against the Northern Alliance until Sept. 11, has publicly asked Washington not to help bring the Taliban's enemies to power.

  For now at least, US policymakers appear to be listening.

  But putting off the battle for Kabul will have its own costs, undermining the credibility of the Taliban's opponents while giving the movement weeks or months of breathing room to mount its defense.

  Northern Alliance officials have little choice but to say in public that they support the US strategy, and have plunged into the political coalition-building process with outward enthusiasm.

  Building a peaceful coalition has proven impossible for decades in a country riven by ethnic divisions.

  Pakistan's main argument against US backing for the Northern Alliance is that the opposition's support is confined mainly to the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek minorities and excludes Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, who now mostly back the Taliban.

  Abdullah, himself the son of a Pashtun aristocrat and Tajik mother, says that his movement is open to all, but acknowledges that it needs to include more Pashtuns to rule the whole of Afghanistan with legitimacy.

  Efforts to broaden the alliance have so far focused on an initiative linking it with the country's Pashtun former king, Zahir Shah, now 87, who was ousted in 1973 and lives near Rome.

  But it is far from clear that such a marriage of convenience could produce a workable plan for a government any time soon. The ex-king has no guns, and the alliance still has little credibility in the south of the country.

  The delay in launching an assault on Kabul -- and the lack of an immediate military challenge to the Taliban's control of the capital -- is having a psychological impact, especially after much hype that the start of US strikes would prove decisive.

  The strikes have already killed civilians, and inevitably risk killing more as they continue, playing into the hands of Taliban propaganda and making it more difficult for local commanders to abandon the Taliban.

  The opposition had predicted a mass wave of defections to its ranks as soon as the US strikes began.

  But that, by and large, has failed to materialize on a large scale in the absence of signs of an alliance advance on the ground.

  Alliance officials say some commanders did join them in the first days of the bombing, including 40 who blocked a key north-south Taliban supply route. The Taliban deny this.

  And on Monday, the Northern Alliance said its forces had advanced to within 6km of the strategically crucial northwestern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

  Such fighting could continue into the winter while the front around Kabul remains static, resulting in incremental alliance gains that could help tilt the balance of power in the country.

  The alliance is still hoping for US strikes to their advantage.

  "They need to hit the Taliban where they are standing," said commander Razek as he waited in his dining room for his fish to fry, a long way away from the front.

  "We are ready to attack."
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