Inside the Battle at Qala-I-Jangi

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By 1:25 p.m. from the southwest tower, commander Akbar estimated Taliban strength at "1 1/2" men. On the field below lay hundreds of dead and dying. Two embraced in death. Alliance soldiers stepped gingerly over the bodies. Some of the dead had their hands bound, and Alliance soldiers used scissors to snip off the strings. At 2:10 p.m. Akbar decided all the Taliban fighters were dead and walked down onto the field. His men, by now plainly spooked by the suicidal bravery of the Taliban, had to be forced to break cover. One wounded Taliban soldier, lying in the long grass, was shot to pieces. Alliance soldiers started looting, taking guns and ammunition and rifling the pockets of the dead for money, pens and cigarettes. The Taliban's new-looking sneakers were a particular target. Within minutes, the Alliance fighters had thrown away their shoes and yanked the sneakers from the cold, gray feet of the Taliban dead. The bloated carcasses of 30 horses, with entrails spilling, added a thick stench to the smoke and gunpowder. All the dead were described by the Alliance as "terrorists" and "dangerous foreigners." "I killed four Chechens, four," said Mohammed Yasin excitedly. "I can show you the bodies." The occasional explosion from the smoldering arms depot sent Alliance men scampering across the field, hurdling bodies as they ran for cover.

In a basement under one pock-marked house, five Taliban fighters were trapped alive. Grenades were thrown in the tiny windows and AK-47s fired after them. With Alliance soldiers too afraid to enter the stables, a tank was brought in, crushing bodies under its tracks before firing five rounds into the block. In a ditch on the main parade ground, a young Taliban fighter, lying sprawled on his side, was still breathing. An Alliance soldier dropped a rock on his head. A few yards away lay a bloodied prayer book.

Even in the heat of battle, warriors can be rational; few fight to the death. But the Taliban at Qala-i-Jangi truly did, and beyond it. Spann's body, recovered by a special-operations squad, had been booby-trapped; a grenade had been hidden under the corpse of a Taliban fighter that lay on top of the American. As late as Thursday, those removing bodies were still taking fire from Taliban fighters who had somehow survived in the basements underneath the fort. On Saturday the basements were flooded; Northern Alliance observers expected perhaps five or six surviving Taliban to come out. In fact, at 11 a.m. no fewer than 86 filthy and hungry prisoners emerged; they were given bananas, apples and pomegranates, clothing and shoes. Three trucks took the wounded away. One of the 86 told Alliance fighters he was an American. The 20-year-old, who had been wounded in the leg, said he was from Washington. He would not give his name but said he was a convert to Islam who had come to Afghanistan--after a spell at a madrasah in Pakistan--to help the Taliban build a perfect Islamic government.

The battle was finally over. It had ended as it started, with a surrender. And its story held within its chapters a brutal lesson. The war against terrorism, they like to say, is a new form of war. But at Qala-i-Jangi, as the blood of horses and dead young men snaked into the dust, the oldest form of war imaginable seemed to have made a cruel and bitter return.