Word: pashtun
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...first faint sliver of the new moon over Afghanistan Saturday will signal the onset of Ramadan, but this year the holy month may be a time both of fasting and fierce fighting. The Taliban negotiated away their last stronghold Friday, Mullah Omar reportedly handing the city over to two Pashtun warlords and heading for the hills. Thousands of Taliban fighters, many of them foreign volunteers, remained under siege at Kunduz in the north, with the Northern Alliance threatening to launch a bloody assault by nightfall Friday if they fail to surrender. The era of Taliban power is plainly over...
...There was no word Friday on their whereabouts, but plenty of speculation - including Iranian reports that he may have already slipped into Pakistan. U.S. special forces are roaming the south, engaging in firefights with retreating Taliban fighters and gathering intelligence on the possible whereabouts of their leaders. And local Pashtun warlords, eager to stake their own claim in a new political dispensation, are wresting control of most southern towns from the Taliban...
...surviving leadership, a retreat for the mountains and a protracted guerrilla campaign appears to be the only survival option facing the battered militia, even as a number of its senior leaders were reportedly captured by opposition forces Friday. They've also shrewdly handed over the southern cities to rival Pashtun forces rather than fight them, hoping the bond of ethnic solidarity against the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras of the Northern Alliance may be invoked at some point in the future, particularly if the Pashtuns are alienated from the political outcome of the post-Taliban era. And that remains a distinct...
...something of a mixed blessing. There was music on the streets again, women could shed their burkas and even return to work, and men could finally shave off their beards. But control of the capital by the Tajik forces of the Northern Alliance was being questioned, both by traditional Pashtun rivals and an international community concerned to ensure a broad-based government in Afghanistan, and even by some of their Northern Alliance partners - some 1,000 Hazari troops from the Alliance marched on the capital Thursday, to ensure a share of power for their own group...
...Taliban appear to have been driven out of their last urban strongholds in Kandahar and Jalalabad, headed, no doubt, for the hills where they'll hope to reprise the mujahedeen guerrilla tradition. But reports suggest much of the post-Taliban south is now being carved up among various local Pashtun commanders. Fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a local tribal leader, are said to hold Kandahar's airport. One Yunus Khalis has claimed Jalalabad and the Pakistani border town of Torkham. And so on. With the Taliban gone, most local warlords who once fought on their side have mutinied...