As the bombs rain down on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance finds itself in a tricky position. Stefaans Brmmer reports from Khwaja-Bahawudin in northern Afghanistan
A boyish soldier named Satar cradles a Russian machine gun at his post in a dusty hilltop trench, then fires a short burst towards a hill in the distance where similar boys from the Taliban are sheltering in their own trenches. But the volley was more for show and the bullets fall short of the Taliban, who don’t bother to respond.
Satar, who has known nothing but war for most of his 22 years, says he is waiting for peace. “But until we reach our purpose we will fight.”
That fight, for now, is a low-intensity affair. Brigadier Abdul Qudoos, an avuncular career soldier who is technical adviser on this front, explains: “There is not fighting all of the time. They hide in their hiding places and we in ours. If we see the Taliban, we shoot at them. If they see us, they shoot at us.”
The setting is a barren hilltop overlooking a barren valley and more barren hills on the western front where the Taliban and the so-called Northern Alliance are facing each other in the north of the country. It is an hour-and-a-half’s bumpy drive and half again on horseback from Khwaja-Bahawudin, the feudal garrison town where the alliance maintains headquarters.
The front line here has been relatively static since a Taliban incursion last winter. The Northern Alliance which nowadays prefers to be called the United Front to emphasise the tentative relationship it has with opposition warlords in other parts of the country seems content to have it this way for the time being.
On Sunday evening when the first United States-led strikes targeted Taliban positions in the capital Kabul, in Kandahar and in other key towns, there was no jubilation in Khwaja-Bahawudin, not even at the alliance foreign ministry compound where journalists and officials huddled around a television set. These guys are in a tricky position: yes, any damage inflicted on the Taliban can only be to the military advantage of the alliance, but that tells only half the story.
As news that Kabul had been hit first spread, two Afghan men at the compound complained bitterly. “This is wrong,” said one. “This is our city. I’m from Kabul. My wife, my children are there. They live near the military [bases of the Taliban]. I’m the only one here. The Americans say [people living near Taliban bases] must move away from the military, but they don’t have cars, they don’t have money. They can only stay in one place.”
The alliance leadership here had no comment on the strikes, promising instead a press conference the next day. It never materialised.
In the trenches at the front, the dilemma is more starkly illustrated. For centuries the people of Afghanistan have resisted wave upon wave of foreign invaders Ghengis Khan, Alexander of Macedonia, the British, the Russian Tsars, the Soviets and this is still how Satar and Qudoos see their war against the Taliban. They are fighting a local enemy in name only; as they see it the real enemy is another outside power, Pakistan.
Says Qadoos: “Our purpose is to fight with Pakistan. They are behind the Taliban.”
And the US-led attacks leave him, like many others in the alliance, cold: “The Americans fight for revenge. We fight our fight, which we have been fighting for seven or eight years.”
If there is irony in the turn of events after September 11, Qudoos’s fierce independence and pride prevent him from acknowledging it. For the first time in years his stalemate with the Taliban may be broken, thanks to a response from the US an outside power that has drawn his foe Pakistan, among others, into the “alliance against terror”.
But like it or not, the Northern Alliance has become a pawn in the latest geopolitical game played out in Afghanistan. On Sunday US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said at a press conference: “Our goal is to help [the Northern Alliance] be more successful.”
A day later, halfway across the globe, the leader of the US’s newfound ally, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, said: “This action [against the Taliban] should not be allowed to be taken advantage of by the Northern Alliance.”
Pakistan’s switch from being the Taliban’s main backer to becoming a partner of the US against the Taliban has not translated into support for the Northern Alliance.
Musharraf remains mindful of the substantial ethnic Pashtun minority in his country, the same group that forms the backbone of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance is made up largely of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, although its “united front” is designed to allay concerns that these two groups will dominate should it form a new government in Kabul.
Khwaja-Bahawudin and the surrounds are littered with refugee camps where mainly ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks have fled Taliban- controlled areas.
They have come with nothing but the clothes on their backs and horror stories about homes and businesses razed; even relatives murdered. But one large such “camp” tells another part of the story.
Here a thousand or so refugees inhabit a maze of mud shacks and ruins, clearly home to others before. When pressed, the refugees say that Pashtuns lived here before presumably refugees now in Taliban territory.
It is this ethnic dimension in a fragmented country that must add to the headaches of foreign strategists who are planning for the very real possibility of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. The US has expressed its support for the Northern Alliance, while Russia and Iran have been long-time supporters: strange bedfellows, with Pakistan the odd one out.
Be that as it may, the Northern Alliance is biding its time. On Sunday it closed its airspace even to its own aircraft clearly to give the US-led effort unhindered reign of the skies. But its military build-up has begun.
The day before the air strikes started a freshly delivered Russian MI-24 attack helicopter was put through its paces over Khwaja- Bahawudin, starkly contrasting with the antiquated choppers the alliance used before.
Down dusty country roads trucks bounce towards the front line with troops and supplies. Further west, forces loosely affiliated with the Northern Alliance have reportedly already made advances towards the key town of Mazzer-i-Shariff in recent days.
But when the Northern Alliance here will go into action, and to what extent that action is being coordinated with the US, is another question. And it is a question that Northern Alliance officials in Khwaja- Bahawudin will not answer.