http://www.msnbc.com/news/627086.asp?0dm=O11QN

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press that an armed force of Pashtuns was moving against the Taliban near Kandahar. The official would not elaborate, but Afghans at the Pakistani border who had just fled Kandahar said Tuesday that several thousand anti-Taliban fighters had taken the city’s airport.

Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammed Omar on Tuesday urged his scattered fighters to stop behaving like “a chicken with its head cut off.”

The Taliban retreat has boosted the prospects of the United States hunting down bin Laden, who has a $5 million price on his head.
“The chances of him being betrayed, sold out or whatever are extremely high,” Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid told Reuters from the Pakistani city of Lahore.
“There is tremendous ferment across the south now,” Rashid said. “People are turning against the Taliban, and there have been defectors from the Taliban who can be interviewed for a mine of information and intelligence on where bin Laden is.”

Many residents were rejoicing at the Taliban’s ouster, NBC News’ Tom Aspell reported Wednesday morning from Kabul. Men lined up to have their Taliban-mandated beards shaven off. The sound of music, banned by the Taliban, blared on the streets.
Women walked through the city without veils for the first time in five years. “I am happy to see the end of the Taliban, because they transformed the country into a prison for us,” one woman told NBC.
But the euphoria had a dark side, Aspell reported. Some Arab and foreign-born soldiers who had not fled with the retreating Taliban were lynched, their bodies left in ditches, danced upon or stoned. Any remaining Taliban troops were hunted down and hauled off to prison.
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I think a message is being sent to the jihad volunteers...

-philw