Word: kandahar
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...Soviet war veteran, Wakil Samat Noorzai, living in Spin Boldak, near the Pakistani border, who flatly informed the Taliban leadership that he didn't have the clout to enforce such a promise. Soon after, Omar urged his men to fight to the death. Negotiations for the peaceful handover of Kandahar's eastern borderlands to supporters of exiled King Mohammed Zaher Shah fell apart, and Taliban resumed control of the area. On Friday, dozens of their armed warriors appeared on the sandy mounds beside the Pakistan border fence - a flashy show that the Taliban were still in charge...
...Allies still face a last, major hurdle on their way to conquering the Taliban's last outpost: they have failed to rally local tribesmen against the Taliban. Most of the U.S. hopes are pinned on former Kandahar Governor Ghul Agha Sherzai, best known for letting his commanders run riot in the city. From 1992 to 1994, they set up tollbooths every few hundred yards in the city and raped whatever young boys and women they fancied. Recalls one Kandahar resident: "They had dancing boys for their pleasure." These excesses - scorched into the minds of Kandaharis - led to the rise...
...Ashazai says that even if the U.S. planes were to flatten Kandahar to the point where Sherzai and his mercenaries could march in, they wouldn't last long. As one Pakistani border official remarked: "If America hands over power to these looters and bandits, the Taliban will be back in six months - and the Afghans will welcome them back...
...other main opposition force, led by pro-king supporter Hamed Karzai, is something of an enigma. Karzai gives interviews by sat-phone from "somewhere in Oruzgan province" claiming that he's amassed 5,000 men and is marching southwards through the mountains to Kandahar. It may be true that Karzai once was in Oruzgan - he was rescued from a Taliban ambush six weeks back by U.S. choppers - but there are some doubts that he's still there. One reliable Pakistani tribal elder told TIME that Karzai is making his sat-phone broadcasts from a secluded house in Toba Achakzai...
...Nevertheless, the Taliban think Karzai is a better option than Sherzai and his unruly mercenaries. Kandahar sources say that the Taliban defense minister Mullah Obadullah has sent out feelers to Karzai, offering to hand over the city to him and to Mullah Naqib, a respected former Soviet war commander residing in Kandahar with a large tribal following. "Some commanders are thinking of a change of strategy, but Mullah Omar is overruling everybody." And so far, nobody dares to defy the self-anointed Commander of the Faithful. One Pakistani intelligence officer recently told TIME; "You can finish the Taliban simply...