Breaking the Taliban-Osama axis

THE TALIBAN'S ROUT in Kabul, the Afghan capital, has not settled the fundamental issues of concern to the global community as regards the ongoing U.S.-led military `campaign' against international terrorism. A critical reality during the relative lull over the week-end was that the cruelly regressive Taliban's `commanders' held out at Kandahar and virtually sued for their face-saving surrender at Kunduz, both strategic towns in Afghanistan. Elusive, as a result, is the terror-axis that links the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, the suspected evil genius behind the heinous carnage that shook America and the entire civilised world on September 11. Outwardly, the Taliban's high command is now reported to have claimed that it has severed links with Osama's Al-Qaeda network. On a different but relevant plane, Pakistan has finally stripped the Taliban of its last fig leaf of diplomatic recognition. Originally, the U.S. did appear to have persuaded Pakistan to become a tactical ally for the present phase of the anti-terror `campaign' that was launched on October 7. Moreover, Washington found nothing really amiss until very recently about Islamabad's autonomous decision to keep the diplomatic door open to the Taliban, originally Pakistan's political protege. In this regard, the latest official `spin' in Washington is that Pakistan's diplomatic channels of communication with the Taliban were indeed of some avail as long as the fanatical Afghan group held a few Western citizens captive before finally releasing them very recently. Whether or not Islamabad has actually been guided by this aspect or by the political implications of the Taliban's latest flight from Kabul, Pakistan's decision at this time to snap ties with the radicalised Afghan group can be of strategic importance to the ongoing American `campaign' inside Afghanistan itself.

At one level, the Taliban must have read the signal that its isolation on the international stage cannot be more decisive. It, therefore, remains to be seen whether this fact alone can persuade or pressure the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, to let his ideological alter-ego and partner, Osama bin Laden, face the U.S. and the international community on his own without any `moral' or material backing from the Talibanised Afghans. On a totally different plane, the Taliban's final estrangement with Official Pakistan seems to account for the credible but unconfirmed reports that the Taliban fighters are willing to strike a deal with the ascendant Northern Alliance and save their own lives and to do so by leaving their ``foreigner comrades'' in the field, many Pakistanis as also Arabs and Chechens, to their own devices and fate. The U.S.-backed Northern Alliance is a motley coalition of anti-Taliban forces with quintessential Afghan moorings.

It is in this context that Pakistan's President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, appears to be running out of options for saving the Pakistanis inside Afghanistan, given especially the reports from Washington that the U.S. has not authorised any air-lift of such people of concern to Islamabad. It is doubtful, however, whether Gen. Musharraf, who in September took the courageous `moral' and strategic decision to back the U.S. in the face of opposition inside Pakistan, will now allow this issue to impede the international efforts to break the Taliban-Osama axis and to pursue the two separately. Given the international stakes, the Northern Alliance, which now controls Kabul and has agreed to participate in a U.N.- sponsored conference on the political future of Afghanistan, should also act responsibly. In monitoring these developments, New Delhi should not spoil its copybook by resorting to any unseemly jockeying for a strategic `presence' in Afghanistan.

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