The Afghan Way of War

(5 of 7)

Heavy rains slowed the rebel advance. Just west of the city, Taliban forces in the old citadel Qala-I-Jangi uncorked a final fusillade from cannons, multibarrel rocket launchers, mortars and fixed machine guns. Alliance troops found hundreds of Taliban fighters--most of them Arab and Pakistani volunteers--holed up in a girls' high school. They were zealots, primed for death: after the Alliance commanders failed to coax them into surrender, a two-hour fire fight broke out, and all the Taliban troops were killed or captured. It was their last stand. The Taliban had set up no defenses inside Mazar, and by nightfall Friday the Alliance stormed the city. Dostum's men swept the streets, "trying to find Taliban fighters who have thrown away their guns and are pretending to be ordinary people," said a Dostum aide. "But most of them jumped into their pickups and left."

Among the Taliban commanders at Mazar was the regime's army chief, Mullah Fazil, a man in his mid-20s who is the youngest member of the inner circle around supreme Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Fazil's fate was unknown, but Alliance sources told TIME that U.S. bombers inflicted heavy casualties on fleeing Taliban fighters. In Mazar locals rounded up stray Taliban who had failed to escape and held them until rebels arrived. Some captives were released and, a top Alliance official told TIME, the conquering generals received specific orders not to mistreat prisoners of war. But the depths of tribal hatred in the city raised the possibility of brutal reprisals against captured Taliban.

While jubilant residents greeted the liberators by sacrificing sheep in the streets, the American response to the Alliance's triumph was muted. Privately, U.S. officials fretted that the three main factions storming the city could end up battling one another before the smoke could clear. Dostum, the charismatic warlord who governed Mazar until a Taliban offensive unseated him in 1997, is notorious for his inconstancy and ruthlessness, and he has no intention of ceding authority to the 37-year-old Atta, a rising military star. Atta has curried support like a small-town mayoral candidate, printing up posters of himself to plaster around the city, and Dostum is likely to take that as an affront. "There's a war within a war here," says Dostum aide Sayed Kamil. The area's Persian-speaking Hazara aren't happy about taking orders from either the Uzbek Dostum or the Tajik Atta. "We're not going to accept anybody as big brother," says Abdul Wahid, an aide to Mohaqiq, the Hazara military commander. If the tense alliance among these factions collapses, the U.S.'s dreams of a land bridge from Uzbekistan could fall with it.

Despite losing Mazar, the Taliban is far from crippled. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admits that air strikes have killed only a tiny fraction of the Taliban forces, who are burrowed into caves and hidden in mosques and schools. The regime may be marshaling its soldiers and artillery for a hellacious counterattack. "It's not very surprising, given the heavy U.S. bombings, that they pulled out of Mazar," says Rifaat Hussain, head of defense and strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University. "If the Taliban choose to fight a real battle, it will be over Kabul." The capital is the destination of choice for the 20,000 militants who have crossed the border from Pakistan to fight for the Taliban.