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PAS : KE ARAH PEMERINTAHAN ISLAM YANG ADIL
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HOMETOWN FORCES
Taliban haven't gone far from Kandahar and may return
By Patrick Healy, Globe Staff, 12/14/2001
ANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban soldiers disappeared
from this southern city one week ago with AK-47s,
white Toyota pickups, and chickens and cattle in tow
as they fled after days of punishing American
airstrikes.
On Monday, they surfaced in nearby villages like
Mirwaise Mina, 10 miles west of Kandahar, calling
themselves ordinary ethnic Pashtuns, but still flexing
their muscles.
''One Taliban officer came in with no weapon, looked
at me, and asked about my beard,'' Rah Ullah, the
owner of the only gas station in the village of 2,000,
said as he rubbed a dark patch of stubble. He recently
shaved a beard that had reached the Taliban-regulated
length of 4 inches.
''I never had a problem before with the Taliban; they
brought peace to our village,'' Ullah said. But the
officer ''was not happy,'' Ullah added. ''He still
cared about the ways of the Taliban.''
While the Taliban regime has ceded major cities to
opposition forces, many soldiers have gone underground
in sparsely populated villages. They appear to be
keeping faith with an old Afghan tradition: living to
fight another day.
Yesterday, the new government in Kandahar begun
acknowledging its limited grip on Taliban members who
have dispersed.
Haji Golali - a commander under the new Kandahar
governor, Gul Agha Sherzai - said in an interview that
his forces control an 8-mile perimeter around
Kandahar.
''After that, there are Taliban, there are Al Qaeda,
there are robbers,'' Golali said. ''We cannot
guarantee safety.''
Last night, Sherzai's military officers warned foreign
journalists to leave Kandahar today because of the
expected return of Taliban members this weekend to
celebrate the three-day Eid holiday marking the end of
Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. The Taliban's supreme
leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, has exhorted his
soldiers to kill Western journalists on sight.
On Wednesday, Mullah Naqibullah, a tribal leader,
admitted that the recent disarmament of the Taliban
netted only 40 percent of their weapons. Many roads
out of Kandahar, particularly to Herat in the west and
Kabul to the north, still have checkpoints run by
former Taliban guards and are considered dangerous.
Ullah has called for the United States or the United
Nations to undertake a massive disarmament campaign in
the cities and countryside.
The 20-minute drive from Kandahar to Mirwaise Mina
passes bombed-out remnants of what are said to be safe
houses and homes of Al Qaeda, used by Middle Eastern
fighters for the Taliban. In some neighborhoods,
''Omar'' is painted in black on walls facing the road.
''There are 1,000 Taliban, or men who used to be
Taliban, who live in this region,'' said Ghulamsakhi,
a young man from the village. He has started playing
cassettes on a small boombox again, a pastime
forbidden under the Taliban, but he does it only
indoors, for fear of being seen. (In the capital city,
Kabul, which is firmly controlled by the Northern
Alliance, radios are played at full volume in the open
bazaars.)
Roadside villages like Mirwaise Mina are safe havens
for the Taliban, in part because the regime brought
Afghan highway bandits to heel in the mid-1990s,
winning popular support here for their strict
enforcement of Islamic and civil laws. Businessmen
like Ullah relied on the Taliban for protection and
fairness, and merchants fear that without the Taliban,
lawlessness will worsen.
''This week Governor Gul Agha's men came by several
times and stole my petrol,'' Ullah said. ''They just
filled up their tanks and left.'' He estimated that
260 gallons of gasoline had been taken without
payment, at a cost of about $500.
''The Taliban always said that if any people hurt me,
they would be punished,'' Ullah said. ''The Taliban
was better than this.''
Others hope that the Taliban retreat will be
permanent. Abdul Jabar, a doctor at Mirwais Hospital
in Kandahar, recalled how Omar, the Taliban leader,
had installed an unqualified mullah as director of
public health.
''We had a man who did not know how to treat people as
our director,'' Jabar said. ''These kinds of
decisions, we want them all gone.''
Jabar said he was particularly concerned about reports
that a Taliban commander, Hafiz Majid, and at least 50
heavily armed soldiers were living in the village of
Sperwan, about 5 miles west of Kandahar, and refusing
to surrender their weapons without guarantees for
their safety.
Jabar recalled how the Taliban patiently and
methodically conquered Afghanistan from 1994-96,
rolling through village by village and laying siege to
one city at a time.
''If these people are not handled carefully, they can
rebuild,'' he said. ''The Taliban has lost cities, you
know, but not all of the country.''
Patrick Healy can be reached by e-mail at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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