Afghanistan turns a corner

Experts say there is still substantial support for the Taliban in the so-called tribal areas along the Afghan border, which are dominated by the same ethnic Pashtuns who make up the majority in Afghanistan and the top leadership of the Taliban.

"These fighters are now going to spread out in droves, with weapons, to all neighboring countries," warned an editorial in Pakistan's leading English newspaper, The News.

In Europe, where most nations gave verbal support to America's anti-Taliban war, the rout of Taliban forces has been especially sweet to Tony Blair, the British prime minister, who has been at the forefront of the military campaign against the former Afghan government. Even his political opponents joined in praising his efforts. "Clearly, what has happened in Afghanistan is a complete vindication of the strategy pursued by the coalition, led in great degree by the prime minister and the government," said opposition Conservative party leader Iain Duncan-Smith in Parliament on Wednesday.

Since Sept. 11, public opinion has remained squarely behind the prime minister, despite warnings by some critics that the bombing campaign would be counterproductive.

But the swiftness of the war has meant "there was not even time for the eating of words between the first and last editions of newspapers as Kabul fell," wrote columnist Polly Toynbee in the liberal daily The Guardian on Wednesday. "Never in the field of human conflict have so many experts of the highest renown been so thoroughly wrong."

The rout of the Taliban does not appear to have had a huge influence on German public opinion, which has been split fairly evenly down the middle. A poll published on Wednesday showed that 51 percent support the deployment of German soliders, with 46 percent opposed.

Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has taken the extraordinary measure of attaching the troop deployment issue to a vote of confidence in his coalition government today - a vote he is likely to survive now.

Still, the cerebral weekly Die Zeit warned: "Kabul has fallen, the Taliban are on the run, but there is no reason to celebrate - not in Afghanistan and not in Berlin.... The danger of a lengthy guerilla war cannot be ruled out."

Bärbel Wittek, a Berlin switchboard operator, says that Germans owe something to Americans for decades of US support. "If we're a NATO member, then we shouldn't stand back cowardly," she says. The middle-aged Berliner is unsqueamish about the possibility of German casualites. "Anybody who joins the military takes that risk," she says.

But in Europe there are clear reservations about the prospect that once military operations in Afghanistan are over, Washington might direct its bombers to other countries. "After Afghanistan, going after the remaining tentacles [of Al Quaeda] will be done in a very different way," says one senior British government source.

Consider the case of Lebanon, home of the Iranian-backed Hizbullah, or Party of God.

In the now-peaceful streets of Beirut, many Lebanese have already looked beyond the Taliban's quick defeat to what they consider the next phase in the war on terror. For them, the end of a war in Afghanistan could mean the beginning of a war in Lebanon.

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