“They either want a visa to get out or a weapon to defend themselves,” said Lalbar Saleem, the ruling Taliban’s chief of security at the compound. “We had 180 application forms to give out, and within a few hours they were gone.”
Afghans are nervous. One after another, local news bulletins say America has decided to attack them in reprisal for last week’s terrorism in the United States. The rumor of war is announced like a weather warning, with the horizon darkening.
On Sunday the Taliban ordered all foreigners out of the country, saying their safety could no longer be guaranteed. The International Red Cross, which rarely pulls out of a war-torn nation, reluctantly complied. Foreign employees of the United Nations and dozens of aid agencies already had left, leaving their Afghan staff in charge.
The only foreign aid workers probably remaining in Afghanistan are eight jailed members of Shelter Now, including two American women, who are being tried on charges of preaching Christianity.
Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader, remained defiant. He summoned religious scholars to the capital to discuss waging a jihad–holy war–against the United States.
In Jalalabad, east of Kabul, the capital, and near the border with Pakistan, people seemed caught in a combination of bewilderment and denial.
“We’re not expecting trouble because we are totally innocent,” said Haji Sali Muhammad, the leading eminence among the city’s money lenders.
At 75,000 afghanis to the dollar, Muhammad has to do business with a gargantuan supply of bills. He is a thin, older man with a perfectly combed footlong beard. He sees no need for confrontation with America.
If Osama bin Laden, the financier of militants who has been given refuge in Afghanistan, is guilty of terrorism, he said, let America show Afghanistan the proof and a trial will be held in a court of Islamic law.
“The court will decide what to do with Osama, cut off his head or whatever,” Muhammad said. “I should think that would satisfy the Americans.”
Shah Mehmood, a Taliban soldier, said much the same: “If there is proof, bring it to us. We have courts here, a system. We’ll have a trial.
“But you cannot expect us to extradite him. We have no treaty. No one recognizes our government or lets us join the UN. If the world won’t consider us to be human beings, then what does it expect? All we hear is: Do this, do that.”
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By and large, comments made in public in Kabul, Jalalabad and other locales repeat the same themes: Only a government and not an individual such as bin Laden could have coordinated multiple hijackings; the United States is looking for excuses to wage war on Islam; American soldiers will find only their own graves in Afghanistan.