An Old Taliban Foe Quietly Marshals His Forces

As the Northern Alliance pushes deeper into Afghanistan, the hunt for a military commander who can rally ethnic Pushtun tribesmen in the south becomes more urgent by the day. Despite weeks of intrigue and jockeying among exiled anti-Taliban commanders, no clear leader has stepped forth.

But in recent days, a new player has emerged: Rahim Wardak, an exiled Pushtun veteran of the lengthy war against the Soviet Union. The former Afghan general is one of a gallery of commanders hovering along the border in Pakistan, knitting together scrappy bands of would-be soldiers and begging the United States for cash, guns and satellite phones.

Wardak isn’t the first Pushtun figure to find himself the subject of speculation. Others have met with misfortune: One was assassinated, the other crossed the border and burrowed into the Afghan wilderness under disputed circumstances.

With the Northern Alliance thundering south, there isn’t much time to scout. Afghanistan can’t be won--and the war is unlikely to end--without the political and military cooperation of Pushtuns, the nation’s largest ethnic group.

“The Northern Alliance will never be capable of taking the Pushtun south. They will face a guerrilla war,” a U.N. official here said. “If the political process does not materialize, Afghanistan is in for utter chaos.”

A fierce band of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, the Northern Alliance was a natural ally for the U.S. in its campaign against the Taliban. But in the code of ancient tribal tensions that still laces Afghanistan, the northern soldiers are regarded with distrust by Pushtuns. The mutual animosity hung in the background this weekend as Washington instructed the Northern Alliance to stay out of Kabul, the Afghan capital.

Flush from northern victories, the alliance made no promises. If the northern soldiers advance too deep into the south, tribal warfare would probably be sparked. But there is no equivalent army poised to fight the Taliban in the south, and nobody to scrape together such a force.

Enter Wardak, who spent the 1980s dashing back and forth over the border, fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and drumming up cash and guns from sympathetic donors in Pakistan. Wardak is “a clean man, and we trust him,” a high-ranking Pakistani official said Sunday.

“He knows Afghanistan; he knows the science of the military,” added Rasul Amin, an Afghan political scientist living in Peshawar, Pakistan. “I know he’s highly qualified. Everybody from the former times respects him.”

Wardak’s is a familiar moujahedeen saga. He opposed and ultimately fled from the Taliban, dropped into the obscurity of exile and resurfaced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., eager to take his country back. He reportedly tried to orchestrate a coup in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban has its stronghold, then ventured to Rome for meetings with Afghanistan’s exiled king, Mohammad Zaher Shah. He spent two weeks in Washington in October, canvassing for cash to raise an army.

Wardak is not the first charismatic soldier to capture the fancy of those tasked with designing new military and political infrastructures for Afghanistan, in anticipation of the Taliban’s ouster.

The first instant hero was former guerrilla warrior Abdul Haq, who lost a foot battling the Soviets in the 1980s, fled the Taliban and took up residence in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Inspired by the newfound U.S. interest, a hopeful Haq slipped back into his homeland in October to rally latent anti-Taliban sentiment--only to be captured and executed by Taliban commandos.

It wasn’t long before Hamid Karzai took center stage. The privileged, well-educated son of an ancient ruling family, Karzai--like Wardak--spent much of the 1980s trekking back and forth across the border, ferrying cash and guns from Pakistan to moujahedeen warriors in Afghanistan.

When Karzai stirred from his exile and returned to Afghanistan in recent weeks in hopes of sparking an uprising, he nearly met with disaster. Taliban soldiers attacked, a shootout ensued and Karzai--according to the U.S. government--was snatched from the fray by a U.S. helicopter. Karzai and his family have denied any American intervention. They claim that Karzai fought his way to higher ground by himself.

Karzai is now holed up in the mountains of Afghanistan, calling for a meeting of tribal elders, granting occasional media interviews and making radio pleas to fellow Afghans.

With the war sliding south at an alarming clip, Wardak is staying more or less out of sight. Friends say he moves between Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, and Peshawar. Reached by telephone in Islamabad on Sunday, the general said he will not speak publicly for another week or two.

“Everything is fluctuating right now,” he said.

This weekend, Afghan exile and longtime Wardak collaborator Haji Zaman rented an office in Peshawar. “We will work from here to raise our army,” he said. In a walled stretch of grass, 25 exiles lounged on their prayer rugs Saturday night, Kalashnikovs at their sides.

Men like these--longtime Taliban foes who see the sudden surge of American interest as their best chance for grabbing the land back--are now clustering at Pakistan’s borders. But first, they want more guns, bullets, food and cash. And they want the international community to pick up the tab.

“We can’t go empty-handed,” Zaman said. “They have guns; we have nothing.”

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Times staff writer Rone Tempest contributed to this report.