<

U.S. Faces Guerrilla Warfare
Friday, March 8, 2002
By Rory McCarthy
The Guardian

"The Americans shouldn't bomb all the Taliban," Taj Mohammad Wardak, the newly appointed governor of Gardez, said. "There are good Taliban and there are bad Taliban. We should accept the good Taliban back."

The Afghan capital, Kabul, today looks a vastly different city from the one the Taliban ruled until just five months ago. Music fills the streets, women walk unhindered through the bazaars, some without their burqas. Tajik soldiers from the northern provinces stand guard outside government buildings where the Taliban's Pashtun troops once stood. And Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, has returned to replace the Taliban's Pashtu language in the capital. Aid workers have flocked back to the city and for the first time in years western diplomats openly drive through the streets visiting ministers and commanders.

But the peace in Kabul is yet to spread to the rest of Afghanistan. Just three hours drive to the south, American troops are fighting their biggest battle of the war, and in the mountains around the eastern town of Gardez they are taking heavier casualties than ever before.

In hundreds of villages around Gardez there are Taliban and al-Qaida fighters and their sympathisers, lying low and waiting for the chance to fight back. The American military operation will soon have to shift from the set piece battles it has faced until now to a prolonged and dangerous guerrilla conflict.

In the town of Gardez tensions are strained. Some Afghan commanders have been excluded from the battle, others are fighting against Taliban commanders who were once their closest friends and comrades in arms. Today two black, red and green government flags are flying over the small, dusty, mud-brick town with its plethora of butchers' shops, market stalls and boot polishers. But much of the sympathy in the town lies still with the Taliban, not the new government in Kabul.
(More: The Guardian News Source)
2002 Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited.

Dan