The Enemy's Enemy

By Johanna McGeary

Black mourning banners still wave across the steep gorges, pockmarked villages and invisible redoubts that make up the thin sliver of Afghanistan not conquered by the Taliban. They honor the "Lion of Panjshir," Ahmed Shah Massoud, revered commander of the anti-Taliban forces, assassinated two days before the attacks on the U.S. Yet the loose collection of Northern Alliance fighters now calling themselves the United Front, who have doggedly held their narrowing ground for five years, are filled with high hope. American bombs are coming. America will help them win the victory they couldn't win themselves.

Since Sept. 11, big powers have come courting. U.S. officials who have long ignored the United Front are eager to plot cooperation. Russian generals muster Soviet-era equipment familiar to the fighters for immediate shipment. Iranian advisers, who steadily kept the rebel forces alive, promise more money and materiel. Afghan fighters, stalled for years just 30 miles from the capital of Kabul, see their dream of retaking the city within reach.

But the U.S., as it moves fast to make common cause with anyone opposed to the Taliban, must weigh the wisdom of embracing these men. The United Front looks like a ready-made partner, honed by years of battle-tested opposition to the Taliban, resentful of the foreign influence of Osama bin Laden. But if the Front has useful ground-level military capabilities, its feuding leaders, riven by ethnic and religious differences, and fractious makeup spell political peril. Nearly a dozen countries in the region hold a stake in the Front's fortunes, and Pakistan, slated as a prime partner for U.S. military actions, is bitterly opposed to advancing United Front interests. Even Washington officials eager to topple the Taliban wonder just how much good the Front can do.

The 15,000 armed fighters are an alliance in name only. Real control lies with a shifting patchwork of power-hungry warlords, guerrilla warriors and ethnic leaders who came together in the 1980s to fight the Soviet occupation. They make an uneasy blend of minority ethnic groups--Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara--in a predominantly Pashtun country, and include Shi'ite Muslims, despised by the majority Sunnis. As soon as they brought down the Soviet puppet ruler, alliance leaders turned on one another and viciously fought in bloody civil strife. The cosmopolitan capital, once known for its beautiful gardens and monuments, was reduced to rubble by factional warfare and complete lawlessness. Territorial warlords who regularly changed sides and betrayed one another are remembered for their ruthlessness and greed rather than any statesmanlike commitment to the nation's good. The Taliban rose to power by imposing austere law and order on the chaos, and gave the old comrades a common enemy again.

The Front managed to frustrate the Taliban's efforts to control the entire country but steadily lost portions of territory and never won any back. It possesses enough hardware for fierce hit-and-run battles but can get no closer to undoing the Taliban's hold. No one knows if Massoud's successor, Mohammed Fahim, brings the same skills to the battlefield. But the rebels could help the U.S. tactically. They could offer friendly bases, harry Taliban forces while American commandos searched out bin Laden, guide foreign raiders through Afghanistan's unforgiving terrain. They say they are already providing the U.S. with targeting information. But their intelligence on bin Laden sounds disappointingly thin. "They know the lay of the land," said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. "They can be useful in a variety of ways."

Members of the Front appear to be anticipating a more substantial, if tricky, partnership. They consider themselves the country's rightful government and expect to ride an American assault back into power. "We deserve this, and we have the right to get this support," says Abdullah Abdullah, the alliance's English-speaking foreign minister and a rising political figure. Impatient for action, the rebels want the U.S. to bomb the enemy while they sweep away the Taliban on the ground. However much they covet U.S. air support, they don't want American soldiers on their soil for long.

Washington seems to be tempering its enthusiasm. Since President Clinton signed a covert directive to go after bin Laden in 1998, the CIA has secretly helped funnel nonlethal supplies to anti-Taliban forces; in exchange, Front leaders let agents use their territory for collecting intelligence on the terrorists. But the U.S. would have political difficulty aligning itself publicly with United Front groups up to their knees in opium trafficking and accused of atrocities against civilians and enemy soldiers. For a post-Taliban government, says State Department official Leonard Scensny, "the Northern Alliance is not an alternative."

Abdullah says the current United Front has no intention of monopolizing power. Russia and Iran would welcome friendly United Front rule in Kabul, but the Pashtun majority would not tolerate it. Neither would Pakistan, with tribal, ethnic and linguistic ties to the Taliban and fear of a hostile new regime on its western border. The U.S. is realizing that involvement in the new great game requires building the broadest possible anti-Taliban coalition, bringing in dominant Pashtuns, Afghans in exile, the whole panoply of tribes and clans--united perhaps under the neutral figurehead of Afghanistan's long-exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, 86. But this is a country where bringing people together has forever proved elusive.

--Reported by Hannah Bloch and Terry McCarthy/Islamabad, Paul Quinn-Judge/Jabal-us-Seraj and Massimo Calabresi/Washington

With reporting by Hannah Bloch and Terry McCarthy/Islamabad, Paul Quinn-Judge/Jabal-us-Seraj and Massimo Calabresi/Washington