Lying low in 'Taliban country'

"I'm sure that the US military is going to get out of here as soon as possible," he says. "If and when the Taliban return, they will kill me - even my family members. I'm already known as the Christian-lover."

The burly, gap-toothed Tajik commander, who has two wives, eight sons, and two daughters complained, as have several other senior Afghans here, that US forces have not acted quickly enough on intelligence he and his fellow commanders have been providing about Taliban and Al Qaeda movements.

"A few weeks ago, I could have told you where a lot of them are," he says. "But now they've all ducked away to new hideouts. If the hunt for Al Qaeda is done only half way, then we all lose."

Another obstacle is local tradition.

Seddiq Ullah, the deputy security chief in Moqor, says that any refuge seeker "whether he has committed a murder in another province or not, is still eligible for refuge with us. This is a tradition older than Islam, and we respect it." That, though he avoids mention of it, would presumably include Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

While the US military has been working closely with Tajiks and Hazaras in eastern and southern Afghanistan, Washington has shown little interest in working with the Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, because their religious schools gave rise to the Taliban.

That lack of international enthusiasm puts the Pashtuns at a disadvantage even if they wanted to help, says Mr. Ullah.

"Right now, we don't have enough money or rations to keep 200 men on the job," he says. "We have not started a search yet."

What Mr. Ullah and other moderate tribal leaders across Afghanistan want first is a much greater international commitment to disarmament in their country. "If the UN or US sent teams in to disarm Afghans, we will cooperate. We are ready to work with them, searching home by home," he says.

What some tribal leaders don't want to see is an increase in the calls for revenge, which they say began when stray US bombs killed hundreds of innocent Afghan civilians last year.

Out of fear of US airstrikes, most Pashtuns are careful, when speaking to a foreigner, not to admit to the presence of Taliban and Al Qaeda elements in their areas.

Mr Ullah avoids labeling the people hiding in the hills around the hunting lodge.

"The problem is that our people are uneducated, and when they latch onto extremism they are reluctant to hand it over. You have to cut their hand off just to have them release it. But with a little help from our friends, we'll try to persuade them to give it up and come down from the mountains and live a normal life with the rest of us."

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