The Afghan Way of War

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In the high command of the U.S. military, that was enough to elicit a few sighs of relief. The U.S. had yearned for a battlefield victory in Afghanistan that would vindicate five weeks of aerial attacks, bolster confidence in the Pentagon's strategy and puncture some of the Taliban's swelling resolve before winter sets in. While the Alliance's siege of Mazar may not have satisfied all those aims, it did give the U.S. campaign a welcome adrenaline jolt. And its significance ran deeper: in its quick betrayals and shifting tempo, primitive clashes and unanticipated results, the battle for Mazar-i-Sharif offers insights into the ways people fight in this forbidding land. Afghan forces on both sides often appear formless to visitors, but they can conceal tightly bound units with a fighting philosophy that places greater importance on energy conservation and brutal surprise than on sheer military muscle. "We must make sure that we pick the right time to fight," says Mohammed Kabeer Marzban, a warlord who controls the northern town of Khoja Bahauddin. "Otherwise we will have wasted our soldiers in vain." As the conflict wears on, learning the strange art of Afghan warfare will be critical to American success.

Last Thursday, in his first Pentagon briefing since the war began, Centcom chief General Tommy Franks came as close as the Pentagon gets to revealing specifics about its strategy: he acknowledged that the Pentagon was "interested" in Mazar-i-Sharif. Two out of every three bombs dropped by U.S. warplanes last week fell on Taliban lines guarding Mazar. The critical prize was the airport, three miles east of the city; Atta told TIME that "taking the airfield is the same as taking Mazar." The runway may serve as a base from which U.S. jets will be able to strike targets within minutes. And the unclogging of the roadways leading into Mazar will help the U.S. build a "land bridge" from Afghanistan's northern border with Uzbekistan that the allies can use to pour in ground troops for an all-out assault on the Taliban.

All of which is to say there is still a long way and a lot of bloodletting to go. Mazar had barely been liberated last Friday when Dostum's forces overran the towns of Tashkurghan and Hairatan and zeroed in on Kunduz, one of the last Taliban strongholds in northern Afghanistan. A senior Alliance official told TIME that the Alliance now controls the northwest and has advanced as far south as Pul-i-Khumri--100 miles away from the capital, Kabul. The official said Taliban soldiers stranded in Kunduz and further east in Taloqan have been cut off from fresh supplies. On Saturday the Alliance launched an assault near Taloqan, hoping to seize the heavily defended city and then coordinate its forces with those moving east from Mazar to strangle the Taliban in Kunduz. If Kunduz falls, the rebels will hold nearly all of northern Afghanistan.