Taliban Envoy Still Wants to Be Heard

Deep in Afghanistan, opposition forces battled with Taliban fighters Friday over the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Inside his spacious two-story residence on a quiet street here in the Pakistani capital, Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef worried that he had lost his voice to the outside world.

For several weeks, Zaeef, a slump-shouldered, robed figure in black turban and thick eyeglasses, has used daily news conferences to detail what he claimed were hundreds of civilian casualties caused by the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan and boast of Taliban victories in the field.

With radio and television facilities destroyed in Afghanistan, Zaeef, a Kandahar native who taught himself basic English with a computer course, had become the main spokesman for the besieged fundamentalist regime. But on Wednesday, Pakistan instructed him to cease holding the briefings, which were usually attended by more than 100 foreign journalists and dozens of international camera crews.

“We don’t know exactly what is the purpose of Pakistan,” Zaeef told three American reporters in his sitting room Friday evening. “I believe it is pressure of America that caused this. We wanted to convey our message to the world.”

On Thursday, after Zaeef granted an interview to Pakistani newspaper editors, the government ordered the Taliban to close its consulate in Karachi. Zaeef said he was concerned that Pakistan, tightening the noose around the Taliban’s last remaining foreign mission, might also close consulates in Quetta and Peshawar.

“We don’t know what they will do in the future. We have many common problems with Pakistan: a long border, trade and refugees. If they close this, how will we talk? It will be hard.”

Instead of his daily briefings, Zaeef has been reduced to meetings with small groups of journalists who show up at his home, drink black tea with milk with the guards in front of the residence and appeal for an audience with the voice of the Taliban.

On Friday, Zaeef said the number of civilian casualties in his country had reached 1,550. “I do not know the military casualties,” he said.

As a cat wailed in the driveway outside the door, he complained bitterly about America, which fights “from the sky and does not come down.”

He has sometimes been called a “moderate Taliban,” but Zaeef scoffed at the idea that there is such a thing. “People who think like that are imbeciles,” he said.

He insisted that Osama bin Laden and other Arabs fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan are under the regime’s “complete control.” And he vowed that no matter how many losses the Taliban suffers, the Afghan people will continue to fight.

“Inshallah,” Zaeef said, “if the men are finished, the women should take up the fight. If they are killed, the children should fight against America until we all die.”