The Opposition

Sitting cross-legged over a breakfast of flat bread and kebab in the upper room of a tea shop, Ghulam Rabbani watches his troops in the bazaar below. Amid a throng of locals in the northeastern Afghan town of Baharak, scores of his Northern Alliance soldiers are making last-minute buys before boarding large Russian-built flatbed trucks for the three-day journey through the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains to the plains north of Kabul. "We've served in the north for the past four months," says Rabbani. "But we're being moved south for duty."

Rabbani's 300-man assault battalion is just one of the Northern Alliance units moving toward the Shomali Plain, north of Kabul, as opposition troops mass in preparation for a final offensive against the Taliban. In Jabal-us-Seraj, an opposition-held town 47 miles north of the capital, the narrow streets are clogged with irregulars arriving from Northern Alliance garrisons across the northeast. Distant explosions light the night sky to the south of Jabal-us-Seraj—U.S. air strikes that have bolstered the confidence of these men. "Since the beginning of the American attacks, there have been no Taliban air attacks on our positions, and shelling from their artillery has lessened," says Fazel Ahmad Azimi, the Northern Alliance commander of Kapisa province, north of Kabul. "Most of the Taliban artillery has been pulled back from front-line positions either into the Koh-i-Safi hills or for the defense of Kabul. And in those firebases that remain, the artillery has been dispersed. We are now fully prepared to move."

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But so far, they remain stuck in their trenches, waiting impatiently for the U.S. to heavily bomb the front-line Taliban assets—tanks, artillery and troop positions—that stand between the alliance and Kabul. Without U.S. air strikes to soften Taliban positions, the estimated 5,000 alliance troops north of the capital may not be strong enough to break through. "They're simply not ready for any big ground attack," notes a Western analyst who has made extensive visits to the front in the past two weeks. But the attack could come just the same.

Supplies are a major problem. Sitting in a shell-pocked command post with a panoramic view of the Kapisa front lines, Mahmad Zahir, a platoon commander with 21 years of combat experience, pulls out three Kalashnikov rifle magazines from the webbing under his jacket and lays them on the floor for inspection. Two of the three are empty. "We're short of ammunition—for tanks, artillery, machine guns, rifles. It's already cold, but we don't have enough blankets, and we have no winter uniforms," says the bearded, sunken-cheeked veteran. "If the Americans hit the Taliban on the front lines hard, we could be in Kabul in one day. If not ... "

An alliance airstrip is under construction near the town of Gulbahar, not far from the front, and should be open this month. Until it can operate, military hardware and ammunition from Iran and Russia must follow one of two treacherous supply routes. The first is a limited airlift: a handful of Mi-17 transport helicopters that load up at supply dumps in Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan, then fly across the towering Hindu Kush range to the Panjshir Valley and Shomali Plain. But last week bad weather and low visibility grounded those choppers. The other supply line is a rock-strewn mountain track that winds for more than 150 miles from Afghanistan's northern border through the heart of the Hindu Kush, crossing the 13,000-ft. Anjuman Pass into the Panjshir Valley. It's a grueling three- or four-day journey—for those vehicles that make it. "This road wasn't built for human beings," says Mohammed Zikria, 25, a Panjshiri driver who nearly died last week when his jeep stalled and almost slid backward over a precipice into a foaming mountain river. "It's a road from hell."