Fighting follows Afghans' ethnic divide

The Taliban are being rolled back along the same ethnic Afghan fault lines that marked their expansion of power before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, confirmed yesterday by the Taliban, had been predicted because of ethnic divisions since the United States started supporting the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance with its bombing campaign on October 7.

"I was in Mazar just before September 11 and the place felt like an occupied city," a foreign aid worker, who had been across the country, told Reuters. "The other main cities will not be as easy."

The Taliban, overwhelmingly Pashtun tribesmen from southern Afghanistan, were always outsiders in the key northern city that has mainly a Tajik and Uzbek population – the ethnic groups that support the Northern Alliance.

The ethnic divisions can be seen from the foreign backers of Afghanistan's warring factions.

Turkey helped General Rashid Dostum, whose Uzbek people speak a Turkic language. Iran backed Ismail Khan, whose Herat region of western Afghanistan speaks the same Persian language.

Ahmed Shah Masood, the late alliance military leader and best-known Afghan Tajik, and his successor General Mohammad Fahim, received supplies via Tajikistan. The anti-Taliban Hazaras of central Afghanistan and their leader Karim Khalili are backed by their Shi'ite co-religionists in Iran.

And the Taliban, until an abrupt change after September 11, were backed by Pakistan, which has more members of the Pashtun tribes who provide the manpower of the Taliban inside its own borders than in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who switched from friend to enemy of the Taliban in September, pointedly told Reuters this month leaders of the Pashtuns are not the Taliban. Now he wants a new tribal leader to emerge.

"In this tribal environment the tribal leaders are there. The Taliban are not the tribal leaders, so where are they?," he asked in a Reuters television interview.

"In the Northern Alliance the tribal leaders are there, like General Rashid Dostum is head of the Uzbeks, General Fahim is the head of Tajiks and for the Hazaras it is Khalili," Musharraf said.

Once Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, took Mazar-i-Sharif, he immediately pushed his Uzbek-Afghan forces north toward the Amu Darya river that forms the border with Uzbekistan.

Taliban forces who reportedly are heading east and south, possibly hoping to wind their way through the Hindu Kush toward Kabul, will find themselves isolated in Tajik areas.

These are the people who revered the Taliban's main foe Masood, assassinated two days before the attacks on New York and Washington. That has since been blamed on Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born militant who is suspected of masterminding the U.S. attacks and whom the Taliban are shielding.

If the Taliban survive in that area en route to Kabul, they would run into Hazaras, a Muslim Shi'ite group likely descended from the 13th century invasions of Genghis Khan, who have fought the Taliban since they moved into the region after capturing the Afghan capital in 1996.

The Taliban claim control of the area, which includes Bamiyan where they outraged world opinion by blowing up giant, ancient statues of the Buddha last winter in their iconoclastic campaign.

But Khalili, who heads a coalition of eight Shi'ite guerrilla groups in the area, returned from Iran to lead fighting last December when the Taliban repeatedly lost control of vital parts of the road from the north to Kabul.

Alternatively, if the Taliban try to retreat along the western edge of Afghanistan down the road toward the key city of Herat, they could find their path blocked by the forces of Khan, a former governor of Herat who was driven into exile in Iran by the Taliban in 1995.

A spokesman for Khan told Reuters yesterday their forces were on the outskirts of the city of Qala-i-Nau, which is the capital of Badghis province and astride the main road from Mazar-e-Sharif to Herat.

The spokesman, Naseer Ahmed Alvi, complained of a shortage of ammunition to mount a final attack – which would then open the way to retaking Herat – but U.S. officials have said they are trying to get supplies to Khan's forces.

Kabul, which the Northern Alliance says it will advance toward but not take, is an ethnically mixed city. The Taliban, most comfortable in purely Pashtun areas, have never moved their leader Mulla Mohammad Omar from his southern stronghold of Kandahar.

In that southern area, and along the border with Pakistan, the ethnic advantage felt by the opposition in Mazar-e-Sharif is reversed. There it is the Taliban who are surrounded by their tribesmen and the Northern Alliance would be outsiders.

It is that acceptance of ethnic realities that has spurred efforts since September 11 to create a Pashtun rebellion against the Taliban.

Opposition Pashtuns have been encouraged by the United States to enter and stir revolt, so far without much result. And Musharraf is looking for a new Pashtun leadership for Pakistan to champion.