Word: mullah
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...week is a much different place. U.S., Afghan and even some former Taliban officials say the insurgency increasingly looks like a spent force. Taliban fighters used to slip into Afghanistan from their Pakistani hideouts in groups of 60 to 100; today each group numbers five or fewer. Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his 10 loyal commanders still direct military operations--but they're phoning it in, say coalition officials. An Afghan liaison with U.S. special forces says Omar was spotted two months ago in Karachi, Pakistan. A U.S. officer in Kandahar says a Taliban fighter was recently overheard lamenting...
Diehards remain, as evidenced by several ambushes in southern Afghanistan last week, one of which injured two G.I.s. A former Taliban governor, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi, told TIME he is trying to persuade former comrades to give up their guns, but some are determined to keep fighting. "The Taliban have their backs to the wall," he said, "and they're still dangerous." --By Tim McGirk
...David Flynn, a Bostonian from the 25th Infantry Division, whose men have yet to fire a single shot at the Taliban during their year-long duty in Kandahar. Proof of the Taliban's decline comes from those who were once in its own ranks, too. A former Taliban governor, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi is trying to persuade his former comrades to give up their guns. "Many Taliban want to come back in," says Rocketi. But he cautions: "The Taliban have their backs to the wall, and they're still dangerous...
...Certainly, Omar can talk tough. In a taped message on March 8, the mullah said that the Taliban would come out fighting after this year's snowfall melts. Olson, too, expects the Taliban to step up their activities during this spring, and worries that they might combine with al-Qaeda to try a "strategic blow," such as an assassination attempt on Karzai. But the Taliban's ability to carry out such attacks is waning. Two years ago, say U.S. soldiers and their Afghan army colleagues, the Taliban would come over from their Pakistani hideouts in groups...
...according to coalition officials. One Afghan official who acts as liaison with U.S. Special Forces says that Omar was spotted two months ago in Karachi, more than 800 km away from the Afghan field of battle, though Abdul Latif Hakimi, a Taliban spokesman, denies the report. "I've seen Mullah Omar many times, always in Afghanistan" Hakimi told TIME. If so, nobody told the Taliban fighter chatting recently on a radio monitored by coalition forces. "We actually overheard a Taliban fighter break out into a lament, saying 'Where are you, Omar, why have you forsaken us?'" one U.S. officer recounts...