TALIBAN WON'T BE PUSHOVER

In one week, the situation in Afghanistan has changed dramatically. The
radical Muslim Taliban militia that controlled up to 90 percent of Afghan
territory, has collapsed and abandoned nearly all major cities, including
the capital Kabul. But are the Taliban and its foreign supporters -- Osama
bin Laden or his al-Qaida terrorist organization -- truly on the verge of
extinction?

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan ruthlessly. Life was miserable and made even
worse by a terrible drought. Bin Laden and his men were genuinely hated by
most Afghans as foreigners mingling in local affairs. However, the apparent
fall of the Taliban was not the result of a popular revolution, nor was it
the direct result of an offensive by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.
The Taliban forces withdrew from Kabul and from several other major cities
hours or sometimes days before the first Northern Alliance patrols arrived.

The U.S. air campaign was, of course, a decisive factor. Carpet bombing
decimated the best Taliban troops holding entrenched positions and they
were unable to hit back at the high-flying planes.

Afghanistan is not an industrialized country. It's even hard to call it
"preindustrial." The rules of war in Europe do not apply in Afghanistan.
The major cities are not a source of military strength, are not economic
centers and do not produce wealth or armaments to run a war. The cities of
Afghanistan are not a strategic asset, but rather a liability, as the
Russians found out in the 1980s, and as the present anti-terrorist
coalition will soon find out to their regret.

The Taliban were not only decimated by bombing, they were also running out
of food. Two weeks ago the Taliban tried to stop volunteers from Pakistan
crossing the border to fight, because there were not sufficient provisions
to keep them through the winter. Presumably there was no food for the major
cities, as delivery of international aid was hampered by U.S. bombing, and
hunger could have caused a genuine anti-Taliban revolution. Now feeding the
Afghan population is the sole political and logistical responsibility of
the U.S.-led coalition. If there are food riots, they will be anti-Western
in character.

The true source of military and economic power in Afghanistan lies in the
countryside, where opium poppies are grown. Even more important (and
profitable) is the control of export routes by which Afghan heroin reaches
Europe and the United States. By withdrawing from the major cities, the
Taliban have preserved a large force of dedicated fighters. This puts the
Taliban and al-Qaida in a strong position to dominate the heroin trade
following the fall of their government.

Last year, the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, issued an order banning poppy
growing, and only the Northern Alliance, reportedly, continued to produce
and export drugs via Tajikistan and Russia. It is also reported that most
of the previous year's harvest of opium has been stockpiled in Taliban
hideouts near the Pakistani border.

Now the Taliban -- no longer a government seeking international recognition
but an anti-Western guerrilla force -- can go straight into big business,
making millions, if not billions of dollars from the heroin trade. Drug
money will support an unending guerrilla campaign against the U.S.-led
peacekeeping force and there will be enough left for al-Qaida to run its
international terrorist operations. Also, the Taliban now have the
"infidels" where they want them -- not up in the sky, but on the ground in
Afghanistan.

It's now clear that Afghanistan will split into a maze of warlord-led
tribal fiefdoms -- each existing almost entirely on opium growing and the
looting of international aid -- with a weak figurehead central government
in Kabul. The loose multinational peacekeeping force that is now being
deployed in Afghanistan will hardly be able to cope with the problems. Even
destroying the poppy fields from the sky will not be easy, since a lot will
probably be grown by official Western allies from the Northern Alliance or
Pushtun tribes that claim to be anti- Taliban.

The main problem faced by the Russian military in Afghanistan was that they
never knew for sure who was their ally and who not. The Russians bombed all
and soon all were indeed enemies. Even if the U.S.-led allies are lucky and
succeed in killing Omar and bin Laden in the coming days or weeks, this
will hardly prevent the emergence of a bloody quagmire in Afghanistan with
a lethal mix of radical Islam, narcotics trading and international terrorism.