  GHAZNI, AFGHANISTAN -- Dec 30, 2001 The foreign gunmen of al Qaeda were especially feared and despised in this southern Afghan city of 300,000. They and their ethnic Pushtun Taliban hosts meted out brutal treatment to the large Tajik, Hazara and Turkmen populations here. But ask the local anti-Taliban militiamen, who now control much of the city, what most bothers them most about the Arabs of al Qaeda's "Operations Base 32" and the answer sends a chill down the spine: they're still here. Two large groups of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters are holed up in mountainous regions only 20 kilometers from Ghazni, the Zenakhan canyon to the east, just inside neighboring Paktia province, and the district of Khawgany to the north. Evidence here, including a chance encounter with three truckloads of heavily armed Taliban soldiers, indicates that the Pentagon's nightmare scenario Taliban and al Qaeda die-hards regrouping to fight on -- could well be realized. "We want to go and attack them, but we don't have enough men and weapons," says Mohammed Omar, a former teacher thrown out of work by the Taliban and now a member of Unit 58, Ghazni Army. If this dozen or so ex-soldiers, shop keepers and one-time Mujahideen are anything to go by, the other 57 units of the anti-Taliban militia total less than a thousand men. |
 Mohammed Omar and fellow anti-taliban militiamen look down from Ghazni's Bala Bissar Fortress. |
Omar's group mans Ghazni's magnificent Bala Hissar, or Grand Fortress, which sits atop a huge rock thrusting up through the city's centre. Savaged in the post-Soviet civil war, Bala Hissar now stands as a crumbling symbol of the futility and endlessness of warfare in this country. The ruins sprout gun and cannon barrels at every point of the compass. The difference is that the trigger fingers now belong to men with what appears to be the overwhelming support of the local people. "We have our freedom back," one shop keeper told me in halting English: "tell the world to come and help us kill the rest of them (the Taliban)." Indeed concluding the war here will take a lot of support. A popular former Mujahideen commander, Haji Qari Baba, is back in overall charge of the city and its defenses, but these days he's in Kabul, the capital, appealing for help from new leader Hamid Kerzai and Defence Minister Mohammed Fahim. But like the long-delayed deployment of the international security force in Kabul, reinforcements for Ghazni are weeks if not months away. |
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Meantime, it's up to the arm's length warriors of the U.S. Air Force to attack al Qaeda and Taliban groups on the run in southern Afghanistan. The air campaign's results have been mixed -- murderously so. |
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In Ghazni's hospital, brothers Ali and Sultan Khel, six and four years old, lie in pain with broken limbs. But they're alive: their mother and thirteen other people died when U.S. bombers attacked the village of Mushkhil, about 45 kilometers south of Ghazni, December 8th. The boys' uncle, Faisal, told this reporter that two U.S. jet fighters passed over the village just before sundown. A truck carrying four Arabs was passing through at the time. An hour later, with the Arabs long gone, much louder aircraft arrived, and all hell descended on Mushkhil. Along with fourteen dead, thirty six wounded villagers were pulled from the rubble. "We are honest people, and have nothing to do with al Qaeda or the Talibs," Faisal says. "Why are the Americans killing us ? Why ?" |  Ali and Sultan Khel, wounded in the Dec. 8th bombing raid. |
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Not every B-52 raid is off the mark. |
 Halil Rahman, wounded in December 29th bombing raid on a Taliban compound. |
Just down the hall from Ali and Sultan lies 24-year-old Halil Rahman, who suffered a cervical fracture and concussion in a U.S. bombing raid east of Ghazni just the previous night. I photograph him, but the friend at Halil's beside is camera shy. Small wonder. The turban, the face, the expression; the young man is patently a Talib. So is Halil: he's the nephew of Qari Ahmed Ullah, the former head of the Taliban's secret police, who is said now to be hiding, with several hundred fighters, on his home turf of Khawgany. According to Commander Baryolai of Ghazni's anti-Taliban militia, Halil Rahman was travelling with a large group of men towards his uncle's place of refuge. I ask Baryolai if he intends to arrest the wounded man and his friend. "I have no such orders," he responds, "I must wait for Qari Baba to return from Kabul." |
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I look surprised. Here's the enemy, incapacitated; his friend is unarmed. Baryolai shrugs. "We have no overall command structure," he explains, "and not enough force to back one up." Minutes later, driving through town, I see what he means. Two pickups pass by with Taliban fighters in back; the truck is bristling with gun barrels and rocket propelled grenades. I raise my camera but Baryolai pushes me down in my seat: a third truck is passing, and the men in the back seat are gawking at me through an open window. Talibs, Kandaharis to be exact, looking all the world like the men who captured Kabul five years ago. We might well wish the newly-agreed International Security Assistance Force good luck in patrolling Kabul. But Ghazni ? It might as well be another country, one still very much at war. |