Report From Afghanistan: That Other War

In the mountains of Afghanistan, summer is the season for fighting. The past three months have seen more than their usual share of it as remnants of the Taliban, ousted from power by U.S. and coalition forces in 2001, have regrouped, attacked remote government outposts, held positions for a few days--and then, usually, vanished at the first whup-whup of approaching U.S. Blackhawk helicopters. Not last week. After ambushing a small garrison in Zabul province, several hundred Taliban fighters hid in a needle-thin gorge known as Moray Pass, waiting to attack U.S. troops and their Afghan allies. Shielded by overhanging rock, the Taliban were protected from U.S. bombers and helicopters, and fighting raged for several days. Local villagers reported seeing Taliban fighters scrambling up the hillside carrying their dead and wounded. Zabul's provincial governor, Hafizullah Hashami, said 40 Talibs were killed and several coalition soldiers wounded. Later the Pentagon said one American special-operations soldier died after falling during a night attack. It would be tempting to say the Taliban is back, were the evidence not all too clear that it never went very far away. While the world's attention has been fixed on Iraq, the other war has sparked back into life. Having nursed themselves back to health in Pakistan, Taliban forces are re-energized and determined to avenge their defeat. The Taliban's old structures may still be largely intact; a Kabul-based security official says the "neo-Taliban" is guided by many of the same men who ran Afghanistan's theocracy from 1996 through 2001, when it provided protection for Osama bin Laden and the terrorist camps of al-Qaeda. General Garni, military commander of Zabul, speculated last week that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's one-eyed Commander of the Faithful, might be hiding in the province's mountains with 800 men. The Taliban has deepened its alliance with warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his fundamentalist, anti-Western Hizb-i-Islami Party, which remains potent in eastern Afghanistan. Hekmatyar used to have close ties to Iran, and Pakistani sympathizers of the Taliban say Tehran may be secretly bankrolling the rebels to tie down U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Washington has noticed the deteriorating situation. "Clashes with the Taliban are up," says a State Department official. "It's not sweetness and light. You've got warlordism, banditry, fighting. Those are serious problems." In response, the Administration is finalizing a plan to double its aid to Afghanistan, now running at around $1 billion annually.

Afghanistan would not be such a worry if Taliban fighters were not able to find a haven in Pakistan among fellow ethnic Pashtuns. With their beards trimmed and often without their trademark black turbans, they blend in easily. In the Pakistani town of Quetta, as in the border village of Chaman, pro-Taliban graffiti are common and copies of recordings made by Mullah Omar are available in the marketplace. Standing in the middle of a bustling street in Quetta, Aghar Jan, who fled Afghanistan in 2001, loudly proclaims his willingness to take up Omar's call to jihad and expel the "infidels" now in charge. "I'm waiting for the order of the emir," he says, referring to Omar. "When the order comes," he says, "I'm ready to carry out a suicide attack."