Word: northerners
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...first week that didn't happen. What had once been the expected strategy for combat--U.S. forces assisting the Northern Alliance in a proxy war against the Taliban--seems to have been put on hold as potential leaders squabble over the shape of a postwar government. Indeed, last week, from Kalai Sharif, a village held by the opposition just 25 miles from Kabul, those watching the bombardment of the capital could witness a rather more prosaic light show: the beams of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks, each of them loaded with Taliban fighters. They were moving toward the Northern Alliance...
...Northern Alliance commanders bitterly blame Islamabad--or rather, Washington's determination to keep Musharraf on board--for the fact that they haven't been given the green light. On Saturday U.S. bombs hit targets in Taloqan, far to the north. "The Taliban is kaput," said a soldier up there, with a Soviet-era RPG launcher slung over his soldier. But it's not; the Taliban's front lines outside Kabul still haven't been attacked. In fact, its position there has been reinforced; an extra 500 men and 20 tanks arrived toward the end of last week. The mood among...
...Shirzai is following the age-old Afghan custom of building bridges, he is also following its equally venerable tradition of nursing grudges. His clan is part of the Pashtun ethnic group, which, with 40% of the population, is Afghanistan's biggest. Shirzai is wary of the forces of the Northern Alliance, who are mostly Tajiks (25% of all Afghans) and Uzbeks (6%) and who are poised, should the Taliban fall, to greatly expand the limited terrain now under their control. "If the West allows the Northern Alliance to gain an upper hand, it will be a terrible mistake," says Shirzai...
Iran and Pakistan are particularly interested in the future shape of Afghanistan's government. Pakistan despises the Northern Alliance because of its tilt against the Pashtun (also represented in Pakistan), its ties to archrival India and its disastrous rule of Kabul from 1992 to '96. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is blunt: "Their return would mean a return to anarchy and criminal killing." For its part, Iran, whose Muslims belong mainly to the Shi'ite branch of Islam, has backed members of the Northern Alliance representing Afghanistan's Shi'ite minority. On the sidelines of last week's meeting...
...25th year of chilly exile in Northern California, where my husband Stan was a professor at San Francisco State. By then I'd published nine novels besides Interview with the Vampire, but we still couldn't afford for Stan to quit his job and to move back to New Orleans...