Taliban transforms Afghanistan for total war

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN

At the dilapidated Zarnigar hotel in downtown Kabul these days, a friendly new mullah greets guests. He is tall, has a long, well-groomed beard, a pistol on his waist, and a smile on his face. When children come begging, he hands them rupees. When bombs fall outside, he leads the prayers.

"May Allah give Islam victory around the world - in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, and Chechnya, but especially today in Afghanistan," he prays in the cramped lobby, where blackened walls are carved with the names of guests. "May God drown the Americans in the ocean of his anger and destruction."

The Taliban has totally transformed the territories it controls since the start of US-led airstrikes and prepared for all-out war. Schools are empty (some people have fled, page 9), and students have been sent to the front lines.

Senior officials have been assigned to lead the country in prayer or monitor dissent in the provinces. Almost every Taliban and every citizen is carrying out a war-related duty. Public administration is now almost entirely devoted to the war effort.

And the supreme leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, warned the US that it will learn a "tougher lesson" in Afghanistan than the Soviet Union did. Mr. Omar told the Algerian newspaper El Youm that Taliban forces had not yet begun the "real war against the Americans because of their technological power." Once the ground war begins, he said, America will lose its edge.

Back inside the Zarnigar, a senior education ministry official, Haji Rahmat Ullah explains over tea: "Out of our 30,000 education employees across the country, we have less than a few hundred still performing their usual duties. All of our teachers have gone off to the front lines with their madrassah [religious school] pupils. Many of them have been dispatched to the border areas with Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

"The military situation may be under control, but the normal administration of this country has been put aside," he says. He explains that the country's Shura Council, the top religious body, has advised many other officials to head out into the provinces "to keep an eye out for uprisings against the government."

Analysts in neighboring Pakistan say that the Afghan approach to war means total commitment to the cause. Most Afghans have already committed everything they have to the war effort - down to their last rupee.

"Afghanistan is, no doubt, a very weak nation in terms of resources and equipment - things you would ordinarily consider crucial to a war effort," says Wagar Alishah, a history professor at Peshawar University. "But, you see, the Afghans have other things that are required to fight a war. They have willpower and courage backed by religious fervor. Once an Afghan has decided that they are fighting for a just cause, they will pursue it at any cost."

Judging from reports coming from the front lines in recent days, most Taliban warriors, assisted by their foreign, mostly Arab and Pakistani counterparts, are convinced of their cause. In recent days, US Defense Department officials have begun to talk in terms of the Taliban's rugged tenacity, as opposed to earlier descriptions of them as a weak fighting force on the brink of quick collapse.

It is not possible to determine how much of the Taliban's battle against the world's lone superpower is driven by fervor and how much of it is inspired by fear. Dissent is not tolerated, and death by hanging or firing squad is the usual punishment for so-called "traitors."

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