Besieged commander says U.S. could turn tide

“On the other side of those mountains is Kabul,” he said as his voice filled with yearning.

A distance of 35 miles separates these rebel forces of the Northern Alliance from the Afghan capital. Instead of threatening the ruling Taliban regime, Khan’s contingent has struggled to hold its ground. Through three years of trench warfare, hundreds have died but neither side has gained an inch, he said.

But as a fierce wind blew off the flat plains that separate his outpost from the mountain range and Kabul beyond it, the commander allowed himself a fantasy that involved some help from the United States.

“They should bomb there,” he said, pointing to a Taliban tank position on the other side of the cratered runway. “And there,” he said pointing to a base on a distant hillside.

“With the aircraft, you do that,” he said. “We will do the rest with soldiers.”

For now, the vision has no basis in reality. Khan’s units, positioned at the southern tip of a sliver of alliance-controlled territory, can be supplied only by transport helicopter, and the alliance is believed to have only six of them.

Even if the troops are supplied, they are outnumbered. Across Afghanistan, the alliance says it has 15,000 fighters squared off against Taliban forces, including foreign volunteers. The Taliban, which governs more than 80 percent of the country, boasts of having 300,000 soldiers, but more reliable estimates put the strength at between 45,000 and 60,000 men.

The general and his frozen front line represent the reality of the Northern Alliance. It would take months as well as money and equipment for the rebel forces to transform themselves into an effective offensive threat, according to military analysts.

At best, the alliance could be used to tie down Taliban forces. But what they do have, Khan and his peers say, is encyclopedic knowledge of the Taliban and its bombing targets, units and tactics. They say U.S. military officials have not contacted them in search of that information.

Touring the air base with Khan is a walk through Afghanistan’s military history. The base, built in 1976, has an enormous runway that can handle the huge Tupelov and Antonov transport planes that flew men and material into the country during the 1979 Soviet invasion.

The carcasses of two MIG fighters riddled with bullet holes now sit at the northern end of the runway. Elsewhere on the base, mortars and rockets have torn large holes through the roofs of buildings.

The general’s troops, 40 of whom line up for him as he drives away from the control tower, look nervously at him as he peers back at them from a truck window.

To an outsider, they look like peasants with guns. Only one man has a uniform and one-quarter of them appear to be teenagers. When asked, the general explains that all of his soldiers must be at least 21.

But the soldiers, even ones who appear to be boys, have a hardened look about them. When asked about the sniper threat as he stands in the control tower, he shrugged and said, “He will hit me if it’s God’s will.”

While there were no signs Friday of any preparations for an offensive, alliance commanders did appear to be preparing for a battle against Mazar-i-Sharif, a Taliban-held city.

Fighting, usually instigated by the Taliban, has steadily shrunk the alliance’s holdings to three pockets of northern Afghanistan.

Mir Rahaman, Khan’s brother who is also a local commander, said the foreign volunteers who fight with the Taliban do not fear death. “The Arabs kill themselves here just like they did in New York,” he said.