The Taliban

22 Pages 5380 Words

from Kandahar, their last stronghold. Some skulked
back to their home villages with the idea of starting new lives.
Others, like Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme
leader, went missing. As a fresh power struggle raged in Kandahar
and a new Afghan government prepared to take over in Kabul, the
black turbans and medieval strictures of Taliban rule began to
seem like a bad dream.

There are bound to be more surprises lurking in the snow. In a war
of bribes and secret deals, targets have a way of becoming more
elusive the closer you get to them, and victory doesn't necessarily
bring the promised spoils. The conflict in Afghanistan has
confounded expectations. Who anticipated that the Taliban's rule
would disintegrate wholesale two months into the U.S. bombing
campaign? Or that the regime's soldiers would abandon Kandahar
as meekly and abruptly as they did, quitting the city in the dead of
night?

The reaction to that leave taking proved to be no surprise at all.
The next morning, amid much confusion, there was jubilation in
the streets of Kandahar. Residents tore down the white Taliban
flag and waved pictures of exiled King Zaher Shah, and rebel
Pashtun forces fired AK-47 rounds into the air.

But there was no champagne in the allies' high command.
Anti-Taliban forces in Kandahar led by Hamid Karzai, the interim
Prime Minister of Afghanistan, failed to capture Omar. That left
the U.S. and its allies embroiled in a two-front manhunt for the
Taliban chief and his even more high-profile Saudi guest. "We
simply don't know right now where Omar is,"...