A Country On Edge

By Tim McGirk/Afghan Border

The borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan have become home not only to millions of refugees, but also to countless rumors about the fate of the Taliban government inside Afghanistan. Everyone here, from Pakistani spies to Afghan heroin smugglers, has a different take on the future of Kabul's despotic clerics. And though much of the gossip about what is happening in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan--mass defections of soldiers, for instance--is just gossip, there are signs of weakness, hints that the tight core of men around Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar are at the very least anxious about what may be coming their way. Their announcement on Saturday morning, for instance, that they would consider releasing eight Christian missionaries held on charges of spreading religious doctrine, seemed to some a slight tremble of nerves. "If [the U.S.] stops issuing threats," a Taliban communique said, "we will take steps for the release of the eight foreigners."

But the threats--and the broad international alliance gathering to fight terror--already seem to have begun weakening some elements of the Taliban's rule. Until the Sept. 11 suicide attacks, for example, neighboring Pakistan had treated the Taliban with the patience of a father dealing with a delinquent teenager. No longer. Last week Pakistani authorities wasted no time in beginning to consider a replacement for the warrior-clerics ruling Afghanistan. The question is whether isolation and U.S.-led pressure will be enough to collapse the Taliban.

For every tale of courage in Afghanistan's bloody history, there is a corresponding one of betrayal, with loyalties that shift like the desert sands. That shift is beginning against the Taliban's leadership. Fissures are appearing in the Taliban ranks between hard-liners and so-called moderates, who privately believe that Mohammed Omar's refusal to hand over terrorist Osama bin Laden is akin to mass suicide. Says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and expert on the Taliban movement: "The U.S. threat is helping to divide the Taliban." Rashid says the Taliban's "fellow travelers," the tribal leaders who don't share the Taliban's extremism, will be the first to shear off, leaving Omar with a die-hard band of devout followers.

This is a rift that Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials are eager to widen. In the border cities of Quetta and Peshawar, Pakistani military intelligence agents are dusting off Afghan war veterans and putting them to work sending out feelers to fellow ex-commanders who are serving the Taliban. Those commanders are being urged to defect in exchange for bribes and the guarantee of a job in the next Afghan government. First indications are promising, according to anti-Taliban sources in both cities. When he asked about arms, one commander from Afghanistan's Nangarhar province was assured that anti-Taliban groups had already started making large purchases. "This reminds me of the old days when the CIA was pumping in money and arms to fight the Russians. But now it's Afghans against Afghans," says an Afghan-affairs specialist in Peshawar. These overtures rattled local clergy enough that they issued warnings to Afghans to choose either "money or Islam."

It's a close race between the two. The Taliban admitted last week that several of its key commanders along the battlefront in Badghis and Laghman provinces, on opposite sides of the country, had switched over to their enemies, the Northern Alliance, taking scores of fighters with them. Although the Taliban still controls 90% of the country, these commanders presumably see a reversal of fortune once the international community starts arming and supplying the Northern Alliance.

Meanwhile, tribal chieftains such as Achakzai have their own game plan against the Taliban. In Quetta, the elders of the 23 million-strong Pashtun tribe, which is spread across western Pakistan and most of Afghanistan, are moving to bring back Mohammed Zahir Shah, the deposed Afghan King who is living in Rome. In high-walled and guarded villas, these elders receive a stream of whispering chieftains, Afghan ex-army generals, mujahedin commanders and Pakistani officials--all eager recruits for an uprising against the Taliban. "It's happening so fast," says Hamad Karzai, an influential Afghan Pashtun elder who is backing the ex-monarch's return. "The signals for a change are coming from inside the Taliban."

Bringing back the King has its drawbacks. Zahir Shah is 86, and many Afghans resent the fact that throughout the brutal war against the Soviets and the turmoil afterward, he remained aloof from their suffering, silent in his gilded exile. But already a groundswell for his return is growing among the Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan along the frontier. Reports are sketchy, but in the southern Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika influential tribal elders are so worried about rising support for the King among their clansmen that they are threatening to burn down the houses of anyone caught switching sides.

Omar is also responding to this revolt with stealth. He dispatched secret police with instructions to arrest any outsiders or chieftains flashing sudden wealth, according to a source in eastern Afghanistan. Jalaluddin Haqqani, a popular Taliban commander-in-chief in Khost, held a rally warning the local tribesmen not to join the King. His forces wore shrouds, indicating they were prepared to die fighting the monarch's supporters.

Traditionally uneasy with one another, Islamabad and many of the fiercely independent tribal elders along the Afghan frontier are uniting behind Zahir Shah. Islamabad is aghast at the possibility that the Northern Alliance--backed by Iran and Pakistan's enemy, India--might actually topple the Taliban with U.S. military help. The clan chieftains agree for ethnic reasons: except for a few brief and violent intervals, the majority Pashtun tribes have always ruled Afghanistan, and they want to see that happen again. As a Pashtun, Zahir Shah fits the bill. The ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance find him acceptable too. After dismissing past efforts to bring back the monarch, Pakistan is now inviting him to send an envoy to Islamabad to discuss the political future of Afghanistan. Once inside Afghanistan, Zahir Shah intends to call a loya jirga (gathering) of all the ethnic tribes to oust the Taliban.

But all bets on replacing the Taliban with the King are off if the U.S. launches a megascale attack against Afghanistan, according to opposition groups and tribal leaders. The better option, they say, is for the international community to home in on bin Laden and clandestinely help the Northern Alliance secure a few key victories, such as the recapture of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Once that happens, the thinking goes, the tide will swiftly turn against the Taliban commanders. Otherwise, a major U.S.-led assault could have disastrous effects inside Afghanistan--and in neighboring Pakistan too. "We have a saying: 'To kill a louse, you needn't set fire to your jacket,'" explains Mohammed Sarwar Khan Kakar, an influential tribal leader and politician in Quetta. "In other words, to catch Osama bin Laden, you don't have to burn all Afghanistan." Despite their grievances against the Taliban's brutish rule, Pashtuns would close ranks and rally to their fellow tribesmen against the U.S. In all likelihood, their forces would swell with zealots crossing over from Pakistan's madrasahs, or Koranic schools.

If it comes to it, some Pashtuns are itching for a fight. In the tribal belt just south of Peshawar, Pashtun elders announced they had recruited 12,000 volunteers to fight a holy war if the U.S. sends in ground troops. One commander from an eastern Afghan province was recently in Peshawar exploring the monetary incentives on offer for a mutiny against his Taliban ruler in Kandahar. He was approached by one of his fighters: "Is it true American soldiers wear boots that cost 5,000 rupees [about $80] each? I could sell them in the bazaar." In the same province, recounted this commander, an old Afghan invested in a donkey and a lantern so he could salvage scrap metal from downed U.S. aircraft at night. War is an age-old habit with Afghans, and they squeeze from it what benefit they can.

At the Chaman border, tribal leader Achakzai listens to a village cleric oozing messianic praise of the Taliban. When the mullah gathers his robes and exits from the dark, carpeted room into a courtyard of flies and the blinding white light of the desert, Achakzai says with a grin: "Once the Taliban falls, that mullah will be cheering the return of Zahir Shah." Loyalty is something the Taliban can no longer count on among all its fellow tribesmen.

--With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Kamal Hyder/inside Afghanistan and Rahimullah Yusufzai/Peshawar

With reporting by Hannah Bloch/Islamabad, Kamal Hyder /inside Afghanistan and Rahimullah Yusufzai/Peshawar