Kabul awaits a new goverment
Guardian News Service, London
After four weeks of punishing, and at times seemingly unproductive pounding from the air, events on the ground in Afghanistan have moved forward with a jaw-dropping speed. On Monday night Northern Alliance troops were moving along the road to Kabul from the north; yet overnight the Afghan capital fell as suddenly as the setting sun, leaving the scars and detritus of five of the most dreadful years suffered by any city on the planet.
Last night things were shaping up to go the same way across a variety of fronts. There was no pause to consolidate a de facto division of the country, with Tajik, Uzbek and Shia forces commanding the north, and some form of continuing Pashtun rule to the south of Kabul. Instead, defying warnings from near and far alike, the military wave swept onwards. In the east, the Taliban were reported on the verge of abandoning Jalalabad. More significant still, there was word of a Pashtun rising, perhaps with covert U.S. support, against the Taliban in the southern city of Kandahar.
Seen from Kabul, the Taliban seemed at first to be mounting something of an orderly retreat. But this could turn into more of a rout. That possibility was underscored by the reports of a statement on Tuesday from Mullah Omar in Kandahar. Obey your commanders, the Taliban leader urged; regroup, resist and fight. Leaders do not say things like that when they are in control of their forces. They were the words of a leader whose hold on power is slipping rapidly away.
In place of the battle for territory between rival warlords and alliances, the Afghan conflict could now be reverting before our eyes into a classic guerrilla struggle, as the Taliban take to the hills and their rivals tighten their grip on the towns and other strategic locations, perhaps giving them the bases from which to assault Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.
On one level, this is all massively encouraging. The collapse of Taliban rule, though often predicted, has come with a life- affirming speed that caught even the optimists off-guard. Within hours, there was a sense that human goodness was sprouting once again from the rubble. People cheered, laughed, and shouted for joy. Men queued to have their beards cut off. Music and songs were broadcast for the first time in years on Radio Kabul, and they were introduced by a woman. Events seemed to delight in pouring scorn on the prophets of doom, who have said so often for so long that only bad things and worse consequences can come from any of the current campaign.
But this is still the Kabul winter not the Prague spring. In Mazar-i-Sharif, captured last week by the Northern Alliance, law and order could be collapsing. The UN reports looting, abduction and maybe a hundred summary executions there; the Alliance denies it. But aid convoys that had been scheduled to set out towards Mazar from Uzbekistan were forced to stay where they were on Tuesday, and other aid was looted in Kabul. There is a real and present danger that the laughter in the Afghan capital could quickly turn again to screams.
That prospect is now uppermost in the minds of all governments, not least because the events of the last 48 hours are such a threat to Pakistan, until so recently the principal regional sponsor of the Taliban. Pakistan's calls for Kabul to remain demilitarized have been spurned, while western calls for Alliance troops to remain outside the city were ignored.
Though the Alliance asked for United Nations support on Tuesday, a good sign, and the UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi moved quickly to begin to outline his plans for the long task of political reconstruction to the security council, time is still of the essence in efforts to control the forces who hold the cards on the ground in Afghanistan. Nothing is more urgent than to get a broad-based, UN-backed, new government securely established in Kabul. Until then, only cautious celebrations are in order.