The Taliban on the Run

On the night of Feb. 23, a Taliban bomber sneaked through the vineyards near Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, carrying an explosive device hidden in an old cement sack. He planted his bomb by the road, primed to go off just as a U.S. convoy came rumbling past. The bomber must have thought he was on home turf. His chosen site was just a kilometer or so away from the madrasah where a one-eyed cleric named Mullah Mohammed Omar launched a movement of young religious zealots in 1994. Within two years the Taliban controlled nearly all of Afghanistan, and Omar had forged an alliance with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda forces. But the bomber chose the wrong place. For months, U.S. soldiers have been busy in Omar’s village, digging wells, building schools, handing out medicine—even helping to restore the tomb of a Muslim holy man. The troops’ efforts to win the hearts and minds of the local people paid off. A shepherd noticed the explosive and told the local police chief. Soon afterward, U.S. Army experts defused the bomb.

That’s a small indication of a big change. Six months ago, Afghans around Kandahar were either too loyal to the Taliban, or too scared of them, to have tipped off U.S. soldiers. Sure, bin Laden is still at large, probably hiding somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and the trail for him has gone cold. But U.S. military officers, Afghan officials and even several ex-Taliban commanders say that the Taliban itself is on the run. “The Taliban is a force in decline,” says Major General Eric Olson, who conducted the U.S. military’s counter-insurgency battle in Afghanistan until last month.

The Taliban’s fall has been a long time coming. After U.S. forces took Afghanistan in December 2001, many Taliban simply melted away into their villages. But plenty chose to fight on. Using Pakistan as a sanctuary, and recruiting fresh volunteers from seminaries around the Pakistani cities of Quetta and Peshawar, die-hard Taliban commanders led by Omar conducted a jihad against American forces. By late 2002, say Afghan officials in Kabul, nearly half the country was out of bounds to foreign relief missions. And without the lifeline of aid, Afghans saw no point in supporting the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai.

What turned the tide? In a word, nation building. Winning over the Afghans by piecing together their war-shattered country has done more to weaken the Taliban and al-Qaeda than any military operation, say Afghan and American officials. U.S. troops who arrived in Afghanistan expecting to battle Taliban in the ravines now find themselves instead in grim, barren places like Omar’s village laying irrigation pipe. And once the villagers began trusting the Americans, say Afghan officials, they slowly abandoned support for the Taliban.

Last October’s Presidential elections were crucial. Eight million Afghans swarmed to the polls, defying Taliban threats of sabotage and terror. “It was a moral and psychological defeat for the Taliban,” Olson told TIME. Karzai helped the process along, clipping the wings of regional warlords such as Ismael Khan in Herat province and Uzbek strongman Rashid Dostum, enemies of the Pashtun tribes that are the main backers of the Taliban.

Now the Taliban is a busted flush. For nearly a year, Olson says, they have “failed to mount a coordinated offensive.” In 2004, according to the U.S. military, villagers turned over more than 100 Taliban arms caches—compared with only 13 in 2003—leaving the rebels weaponless when they arrive from Pakistan. Most of their rocket attacks and attempted bombings are amateurish. “We’ve had Taliban trying to make [a bomb], and it’s gone off in their hands, so they come to our hospitals for treatment,” says Major David Flynn, a Bostonian from the 25th Infantry Division, whose men have yet to fire a single shot at the Taliban during their year-long duty in Kandahar. Proof of the Taliban’s decline comes from those who were once in its own ranks, too. A former Taliban governor, Mullah Abdul Salam Rocketi is trying to persuade his former comrades to give up their guns. “Many Taliban want to come back in,” says Rocketi. But he cautions: “The Taliban have their backs to the wall, and they’re still dangerous.”

Certainly, Omar can talk tough. In a taped message on March 8, the mullah said that the Taliban would come out fighting after this year’s snowfall melts. Olson, too, expects the Taliban to step up their activities during this spring, and worries that they might combine with al-Qaeda to try a “strategic blow,” such as an assassination attempt on Karzai. But the Taliban’s ability to carry out such attacks is waning. Two years ago, say U.S. soldiers and their Afghan army colleagues, the Taliban would come over from their Pakistani hideouts in groups of 60 to 100; now they’re making the crossing with platoons of five men or less. Says Major Mike Myers, a spokesman for the U.S. forces in Kandahar, “The Taliban class of 2004 was smaller than the class of 2003.”

That may be partly because the Taliban’s paymasters are losing interest. Al-Qaeda’s rich backers have “focused their attention elsewhere,” says Olsen—by which he means Iraq. Without al-Qaeda’s funds to support them, groups of Taliban can now be seen roaming the streets of Quetta begging for food. Khaled Pashtun, the Kandahar security chief, says the Taliban still get a cut of the opium trade and receive donations from sympathizers in Pakistan and the Gulf. But for Islamists wanting to fund jihad, Iraq has become a bigger game than Afghanistan.

Under pressure, the Taliban leadership is beginning to split. Omar and a band of 10 loyal commanders still conduct military operations—but only from a distance, according to coalition officials. One Afghan official who acts as liaison with U.S. Special Forces says that Omar was spotted two months ago in Karachi, more than 800 km away from the Afghan field of battle, though Abdul Latif Hakimi, a Taliban spokesman, denies the report. “I’ve seen Mullah Omar many times, always in Afghanistan” Hakimi told TIME. If so, nobody told the Taliban fighter chatting recently on a radio monitored by coalition forces. “We actually overheard a Taliban fighter break out into a lament, saying ‘Where are you, Omar, why have you forsaken us?'” one U.S. officer recounts. And the Taliban’s sanctuary in Pakistan may no longer be safe. Under pressure from the Bush administration, Islamabad has begun to crack down on its former protégés. Last month, 18 middle-ranked Taliban commanders were arrested in Quetta and Karachi, including Akbar Agha, leader of a Taliban splinter group named Jaish-al Muslimeen, which kidnapped three foreign aid workers in Kabul last October.

In Kabul, Karzai is hoping that the Taliban are now demoralized enough to consider an amnesty. Soon, Karzai is expected to announce a “reconciliation” with all Taliban except Omar and his top commanders. The president’s envoys are sending out feelers to former fighters. Olson claims that more than 30 former Taliban officials have accepted the terms, but sources caution that these were bureaucrats, not true commanders. Karzai has been using money and tribal blood ties to split Taliban commanders away from Omar, insiders say, promising them a chance to run in this fall’s parliamentary elections.

Under the proposed amnesty, a Taliban fighter would have to lay down his gun and take a public oath of loyalty to the Afghan constitution. So far, according to Rocketi, it has been a tough sell. “The Taliban are afraid they’ll be put in prison, or killed,” he says. That’s an understandable fear. During their five-year rule, the Taliban made many enemies. But even in Omar’s village of Singesar, locals say they have been trying to persuade Taliban relatives to return home, now that the rains have come and planting season is underway. A nomad preacher has set up a small school in Omar’s deserted madrasah, and girls are being taught there—unthinkable when Omar ran the place. Some villagers are now embarrassed by their link to Omar. Says a driver in the bazaar, “Truth is, Omar wasn’t really one of us.” Abdul Azzaq, a local judge, says “We’re no longer afraid of the Taliban. Maybe they can lay a mine or shoot someone, but they’re not strong enough to attack.” For the sake of Afghanistan’s long-suffering people, pray that he’s right.