Weary Taliban coming in from the cold

Abdul Rahman Akhund has been battling US and Afghan government troops for three long, hard years. He misses raising his kids among the quiet pomegranate orchards he used to tend at home.

With another frigid winter setting in, and a new US offensive being launched this week, this weary Taliban fighter says he's ready to come in from the cold.

"If the government will let us peacefully return to our villages and our children, we will come," he says. "We are tired living on the run in these snowy mountains."

His fellow tribesman, Sarwar Akhund, goes one step further: Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and terror kingpin Osama bin Laden, he charges, tricked followers like him into believing they were fighting a holy war against infidels, "when really they just wanted to consolidate their own seats of power." If allowed back into society, he pledges to "do whatever I can" to help kill or capture the fugitive leaders.

The two soldiers expressed views that intelligence circles across southern Afghanistan have been hearing for months. Many officials, military strategists, and diplomats here are increasingly optimistic that the Taliban are largely a spent force, made up in great parts by disillusioned, worn out foot soldiers like the Akhund tribesmen.

That's why President Hamid Karzai plans a general amnesty for Taliban rank and file as one of his first major initiatives since winning national elections in October and being inaugurated last week.

Mr. Karzai and his American backers hope the move will not only bring peace to great swaths of Afghanistan, but may even lead to the seizure of the high-value terror targets US troops are hunting across the country's south and east.

Senior Afghan officials have been quietly preparing the groundwork for months, meeting with representatives of what they consider the "moderate" Taliban, some of whom may even be allowed to run in parliamentary elections planned for the coming spring.

"People associated with the former Communist regime are back. So are former mujahideen," says Jawed Ludin, a spokesman at the presidential palace. "Therefore, nothing should really stop the Taliban rank and file from taking part in the national life of the country."

Karzai is also preparing a list of names - said to number between 150 and 200 top and mid-level Taliban leaders and hardened criminals - who will not be accepted under the general pardon.

"Those folks won't be let back in," says Col. Dave Lamm, the chief of staff for the Combined Forces Afghanistan. "We will hunt them down and bring them to justice, or we will kill them."

That group would include men like Maulvi Haider, a battle-hardened Taliban commander who agreed to a rare interview for this story along a dusty mountaintop corridor, watched from above by turbaned snipers.

"Amir Ul Momineen [Mullah Omar) is our supreme leader and we will fight for him until the last drop of our blood is shed," he growls, his eyes as hard as the rugged peaks that hide him. "Hamid Karzai is a puppet ... of the Americans and he will do whatever they say just to please them."

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