Taliban's full-fledged self-inflicted rout

Mazar-e-Sharif's fall set off a chain reaction in the militarily untenable provinces, east, west and south of Balkh. They fell like dominoes.

The speed of a sudden military collapse can always be disconcerting. What had charitably been labelled as a tactical withdrawal turned into a full-fledged self-inflicted rout after the hurried abandoning of Kabul.

Except for the drive to Mazar which was led by their best combat commanders, the Alliance's claim about battlefield "victories" should be taken with scepticism. Yet, they are now in possession of vital real estate because the Taliban could not or did not want to defend them. Afghanistan is effectively divided into areas that are either controlled by the Taliban or by the Northern Alliance and thirdly, by "tribal elders", better known as warlords, acting independently of each other.

Like perception, possession is nine-tenths of the law and by Wednesday evening, the Northern Alliance had shed the fig-leaf of a broad-based government in Kabul and set about installing their own.

As for the Taliban, guerrilla armies are not be meant to fight conventional battles in constricted areas, or get their cadres pulverised from the air by making defence lines when they were not supposed to.

Unconventional forces are not supposed to get bogged down in any area where they can be effectively attacked from the air or from where they cannot make a safe exit.

The mystery of the hasty exit from Kabul can be explained by the local revolts that took place in Paktia, Nangarhar and Ghazni, all on the withdrawal route.

Since the Taliban happened to be the governmental authority of the day, some face-saving firefights in or around Kabul, the seat of government, was in order, if for psychological purposes alone.

Giving up Mazar-e-Sharif was fairly painless for the Taliban when compared to giving up Kabul, the symbol of governing authority. The question will remain, should they have given at least a semblance of battle to uphold, in the eyes of all Afghans, the symbol of their authority over the country or beset with defections along their chosen line of retreat? Should they have pulled out when they did, keeping to Mao Tse Tung's dictum for guerrilla armies to fade away and avoid pitched battle? The pounding that the U.S. Air Force gave them must have been awesome. After that relentless drubbing did they have the heart to give battle? Was it then a withdrawal or was it a rout?

Kabul carries psychological connotations for all Afghans. Between 1992 and 1996, Rabbani's Interim Government, located in Kabul (and still recognised by the UN and the world), had virtually no authority over the provinces. Each was ruled by a warlord that is Ismail Khan in Herat, Rashid Dostum in Mazar-e-Sharif. And the militias ruled very much as they wanted. All they wanted was to rape, loot and pillage.

In what today, looks like increasingly like deja vu, Kabul trapped in a time-warp, we seem to have returned to 1994, the year the Taliban came into existence.

Partial gains

Last Sunday U.S. President Bush emphatically advised the Northern Alliance not to enter Kabul. Yet, once the Northern Alliance was in Kabul, in a 180 degree turnaround within 24 to 36 hours, both the White House and the Pentagon said they were pleased "with developments". Does the U.S. want to be seen to be a partner with such forces as are hated by the Pushtun majority? Or will the U.S. seek to make Kabul a demilitarised neutral city policed by UN Forces?

The coalition have only partly achieved their war aims, that is to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and overthrow the Taliban regime.

The primary war aim is yet to be achieved and as for the secondary aim, it has been achieved but at what cost?

One tyrannical regime being replaced by another? The coalition will have to launch mopping up operations to pin down and destroy Taliban forces somewhere and to hold the Northern Alliance penchant for atrocities in check.

Kandahar was reportedly a city in some turmoil but one does not expect Mullah Omar to run but Osama certainly will try and fade away. Still the Taliban have the capacity to disrupt the Alliance's Lines of Communication. The Taliban hard-core (about 10 per cent only are Talibs) can only be destroyed if they are forced to defend whatever they presently occupy, particularly Kandahar.

Alliance forces drove south from Bagram air base north north-east of Kabul. The Alliance had about a 50 or 60 old tanks of Soviet origin in this area. The Taliban continued to occupy Koh-i-Safi, a mountain ridge that dominates Bagram, till the last, despite being regularly pounded by cluster bombs and fuel air explosives dropped by B-52s as well as the six-ton "daisy cutters" that burrow deep into caves and tunnels before exploding.

Most Alliance troops in the Bagram area were late Ahmad Shah Masood's Tajik "Panjsheeris" even though many new disparate recruits from different areas have been paraded around in the new uniforms, sometimes with weapons and sometimes without.

Entering Kabul, Alliance troops summarily executed captured prisoners, mostly Pakistanis. The Taliban had about 15,000-20,000 troops in Kabul, among them 2,000-3,000 Pakistani volunteers and 1,500 Arabs.

"Foreign volunteers" would get no mercy from the Alliance militias. Once cornered they are the ones most likely to be put to the death if they did not fight to the death.

Lesser in number but more disciplined, Sayyaf's forces moved south from their traditional Gulbahar-Charikar area but do not seem to have entered Kabul at all. The Shia Hizb-e-Wahdat were expected along the road from Bamiyan from south -south-west into Kabul even though the Paghman Range in-between is difficult mountainous territory and provides Kabul natural defence. Certainly, the Wahdat are nowhere near Kabul.

Betrayed

The Taliban were confident about Logar and Wardak Provinces as these were Pakhtun areas firmly in their grasp till the fall of Kabul, but when local commanders who were not Talibs but part of the Taliban regime began to change sides, their whole existence as a functioning entity came into question.

Starting from Sarobi eastwards is the Kabul gorge (for about 30 kms) along the Kabul River and easily defensible, but there seems to have been a revolt against the Taliban in Jalalabad, local warlord Younis Khalis has also asked the Alliance to keep out.

In Khost, the Taliban "Commander-in-Chief" ex-Mujhahideen Jalaludiin Haqqani has taken control on his own account.

The Taliban had deployed virtually no troops inside Kabul, there being no military evidence at all that they were preparing to fight in built-up areas. One has to presume that ultimately they did want to evacuate Kabul and carry on classic guerrilla warfare at which they are adjudged to be best.

A hard core of Talibs will remain faithful and almost certainly will certainly launch "hit and run" raids against the Alliance's Lines of Communications. Two major ones have already taken place last Wednesday. If there are "stay behind" Taliban individual and sub-units in Kabul, this is bad news for Pakistan as the ultimate sanctuaries will be in our tribal territories. Ke