Word: haqqani
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...summoned to tea by the local Taliban commander, Mohammed Haqqani. Along with his bodyguards and a Taliban judge, Haqqani is fiddling with a radio, trying to reach the BBC's Pushtu service. He finds it in time to hear that the Taliban have driven the Northern Alliance out of Maidanshahr, south of Kabul. They all beam and cheer; it reminds me a little of watching the annual Lions football game back home...
...Monde correspondent asks what it would take to reach peace in Afghanistan. "We had peace," Haqqani insists. "The Taliban were on the verge of defeating these bandits, until America helped them out. Now, there are robberies and killings everywhere. The Taliban will have to start all over again...
...these supposed moderates? Just last week speculation arose that Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Taliban's popular southern military commander and a celebrated fighter against the Soviets, was playing both sides and had journeyed to Pakistan to negotiate a possible role in a broad-based future Afghan government. Haqqani, who was granted semiautonomous status by the Taliban, represents the kind of element the U.S. thinks it can woo: opportunistic leaders or fighters, outside the core group of dedicated followers, who may be just along for the ride. Many of these men, while fervent Afghan nationalists, don't necessarily believe in a jihad...
Omar is also responding to this revolt with stealth. He dispatched secret police with instructions to arrest any outsiders or chieftains flashing sudden wealth, according to a source in eastern Afghanistan. Jalaluddin Haqqani, a popular Taliban commander-in-chief in Khost, held a rally warning the local tribesmen not to join the King. His forces wore shrouds, indicating they were prepared to die fighting the monarch's supporters...
...that easily. In Khost, counter-terror operations are an extension of local politics. Pachakhan is hunting down al-Qaeda in his region to "protect our family and friends," says his brother-minister, Amanullah. A top al-Qaeda leader in the area, the brothers claim, is old rival Jamaludin Haqqani, a former mujahedin in Soviet times and later a Taliban minister, who squeezed the royalists out of Khost in the eighties. The brothers are in essence offering Kabul and the U.S. a deal: give us money and power, and we will keep Khost quiet. It is not clear whether the modernizing...