U.S. STRIKES BACK

It started as a dispute over a lunch tab and ended with a mass defection of Taliban troops.

One afternoon a month ago, several dozen Taliban fighters ate their fill of rice, bread and meat at the teahouse in Taleh Barfaq, Afghanistan, but decided not to pay the owner.

The owner’s close friends, another group of Taliban fighters, took offense. There was a spirited argument, and the men, all heavily armed, spilled into the teeming bazaar, wildly firing at one another.

The first group of fighters saved a pocketful of afghanis, the Afghan currency, but the meal turned out to be much more expensive: Because of the quarrel, the Taliban lost control of Afghanistan’s major north-south supply route last week when more than 1,000 fighters and 30 commanders switched loyalties to the opposition Northern Alliance.

The key to this country’s civil war is defections. No one ever surrenders. They just change sides.

In the shootout in Taleh Barfaq, several fighters were killed, among them the brother of the second contingent’s top commander, Nuruddin. This was enough to make Nuruddin change allegiances, taking all his men with him--as well as control of a section of the major road linking the Afghan capital, Kabul, with the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

It was not his first betrayal. Nuruddin used to fight for the Northern Alliance, but in 1998, with Taliban fighters surging across the country and storming into Mazar-i-Sharif, the commander switched to the Taliban side.

“When the Taliban took Mazar-i-Sharif, we didn’t surrender. We just raised the Taliban flag,” said Abdul Hakim, 28, a representative of Nuruddin.

Hakim was lounging on a cushion at a military base here in the heart of Northern Alliance country with a fellow defector, Zulmai, 30.

“In our hearts, we were not on their side,” said Hakim, describing the years he fought with the Taliban. During that time, Nuruddin stayed in radio contact with the Northern Alliance, sometimes warning it about impending attacks.

Hakim’s explanation of how Nuruddin’s men twice defected in the past three years sums up the fickle way the Afghans fight their wars and why the winds of victory can change so quickly.

As U.S.-led bomb strikes weaken the Taliban, Northern Alliance commanders are keeping watch for signs of disarray in the fundamentalist regime. They claim to have defectors lined up in Kabul and other parts of Taliban-held territory, ready to raise their flag at the right moment.

Most Afghan commanders are not trained graduates of military academies. They are regional warlords, many of whom can’t read or write and who reign supreme in their fiefdoms. In return for the unquestioning loyalty of their men, they swap sides when the going gets tough to avoid sacrificing too many lives.

“We were surrounded. We were cut off,” said Hakim, describing the 1998 defection. “The commander decided we should swap sides temporarily to save our lives. So we had negotiations with the Taliban. And then they sent some people who told us we would not be arrested.”

Last month’s shootout outside the teahouse in Taleh Barfaq pitted several dozen fighters against 200 of Nuruddin’s men, among them Hakim. Two of Nuruddin’s commanders were immediately killed. Three of their opponents were shot to death, and two more died when their pickup trucks were hit and burst into flames.

The mayhem ruined relations between the two Taliban-aligned factions.

“We were all Taliban until that moment,” said Hakim. So on Nuruddin’s orders, he and Zulmai sneaked across the front line to tell the Northern Alliance about the shootout.

“We had to find out whether we should become friends with the Taliban again or not,” Hakim said. “We were told, ‘No, come out into the open.’ ”

The timing of the switch was perfect for the Northern Alliance. The United States had just launched bomb strikes against Afghan military targets. The Taliban was under pressure. And a major road was up for grabs.

Shortly afterward, Northern Alliance commanders announced the defections, trumpeting the fact that they had severed the Taliban’s main supply route from Kabul to Mazar-i-Sharif. The only alternative route is a long haul through Herat in far western Afghanistan, close to the Iranian border.

Another band of would-be defectors did not receive the same welcome when its members crossed last week to negotiate with the Northern Alliance. The 10 or 12 Taliban representatives from the district of Gorband, northwest of Kabul, met with an array of opposition officials but were sent back with no deal. They had no strategic assets to offer, and their attempt to negotiate terms merely offended.

“They weren’t an important delegation,” said one Northern Alliance commander, Gen. Del Agha Salangi.

Another commander was enraged when he learned that the Gorband delegation was seeking a crossover.

Gen. Abdul, a former opposition commander in Gorband, said his brother, Zaman, was taken prisoner and shot by the Taliban. Abdul’s house was burned, and his wife and five children are trapped on the Taliban side, unable to reach him.

“They [the Taliban delegates] must ask my forgiveness,” Abdul said. “We’ll forgive them if they surrender to us and throw down their weapons.”

Now back on the opposition side, Hakim the defector, echoing the tales of many Afghan villagers who have sought refuge in the north, described the Taliban rulers as cruel, hard men.

“They beat people with cables. They gave orders to kill civilians. They executed them by summary trial. If they took people prisoner, they did not put them on trial or imprison them. They just shot them,” he said.

He described one 1998 massacre: “We were there. They didn’t just kill people. They hunted them like you hunt birds.

“I counted 150 dead,” he said. “Even old men and two women were killed. They were lying dead in the fields, near the house and in the streets. I saw four or five dead children.”

It would have been interesting to hear the stories Nuruddin’s men told the Taliban about the Northern Alliance when they switched sides three years ago.

Hakim and Zulmai seemed remarkably comfortable as they explained their complicated story at the Northern Alliance base in front of commanders who, a month ago, were formally their enemies.

“I feel at home here,” said Hakim.

“We’re happy that we’re here,” Zulmai added.

In Afghanistan, there is no shame attached to betrayal. Everyone understands. It is just the way things usually work.

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Special correspondent Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.