Word: omar
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...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 by killing off Mullah Omar and a few others." The Taliban revolves around the mysterious and rarely seen personage of Mullah...
...Taliban fleeing from the north are heading to Kandahar for a last stand. They know it would be suicidal; the U.S. bombers would spot such a build-up and pulverize the Taliban forces. But most of the Taliban fighters are up in the mountains of Oruzgan and Zabol. Mullah Omar is thought to be hiding up there, too, though the Taliban say he turned up in Kandahar at least once this week...
...Omar still keeps a tight grip on his Kandahar through his loyal corps commander, Akhtar Usmani. A native of Helmand, Usmani's a pragmatist, not a die-hard jihadi, and if the tide turns seriously against the Taliban in the southern provinces, he might step forward and negotiate Kandahar's surrender. He's held in check, to some extent by the 25-year old police chief, Hafez Majid (Mullah Omar owes the kid his life for pulling him out the wreckage after a truck bomb destroyed his house in Kandahar several years back.) Majid is fanatically devoted to Mullah Omar...
...endgame may look like a stalemate, but the best tactic may be to keep putting pressure on the Taliban, maybe move the marines closer to Kandahar and keep up the accurate bombing on Taliban targets as a way to strengthen those Taliban commanders who are willing to break with Omar and negotiate to end the conflict...
...Taliban's ability to resurrect itself as a Pashtun guerrilla force depends on Mullah Omar staying alive. If he lives, and if the Allied forces cannot broker a lasting, stable government in Kabul that passes on immediate benefits to the Pashtuns, then the Taliban fighters will dig up their hidden weapons and descend from the mountains, probably in six months time. The U.S. may indeed have "fractured" the Taliban's command and control structure, as the Pentagon claims, but the militia's lower echelons remain intact, along tribal lines. A commander usually recruits from his own village or town, even...