‘between the dragon and his wrath’, 1994–2017Mullah ‘Omar that the usa would ‘hold the leaders of the Taliban person-
ally responsible’ if they refused to comply with America’s ultimatum and
added that ‘every pillar of the Taliban regime will be destroyed’. 9 In a secret
draft memorandum, Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, explained
another motivation for the administration’s policy. The Taliban govern-
ment and its leadership were to be terminated as a deterrent to other states
that might contemplate harbouring terrorists. 10 Chamberlain’s message
anyway was redundant. On the day she wrote to General Ahmed, u.s.
and British missiles began pounding al-Qai‘da and Taliban command
and control centres in the opening gambit of an overwhelming military
response known as Operation Enduring Freedom. The Taliban, whose
leaders had once met with State Department officials and been wooed
by unocal executives, were now tarred with the same terrorist brush as
al-Qa‘ida. Indeed, Western politicians and the media increasingly treated
these very distinct movements as two sides of the same coin. Since neither
the Taliban nor any Afghan had played any part either directly or indirectly
in the 9/11 terrorist attack on American soil, Mullah ‘Omar had grounds to
feel aggrieved, even more so since ’Osama bin Laden had broken his pledge
not to conduct anti-American activities while a guest of the Taliban. The
Bush administration’s decision to topple the Taliban therefore radicalized
the movement even further and gave the movement a new enemy that
justified the perpetuation of their jihad.
For the beleaguered Northern Alliance, America’s war with al-Qai‘da
and the Taliban brought these militias back from the brink of military
and political extinction. Two days before 9/11 one of the movement’s most
effective military commanders had been assassinated and the Alliance was
staring defeat in the face. Almost overnight, everything changed. The State
Department’s caveats about Iranian support for the Northern Alliance and
Hizb-i Wahdat were shelved and America, Russia, India and Iran began to
pour weapons, including tanks, into northeastern Afghanistan. Operation
Enduring Freedom, however, proved to be far more complex than President
Bush’s famous and simplistic declaration, ‘either you are with us or with the
terrorists’. American Special Forces, dropped into Afghanistan to direct
the bombing campaign and provide support for the campaign against the
Taliban, became entangled in a world of shifting loyalties as powerful indi-
viduals manipulated the intervention to their advantage. Special Forces
sent to assist Dostam, Jami‘at-i Islami and Muhammad Qasim Fahim, who
had succeeded Mas‘ud as head of Shura-yi Nizar, were unaware that, as well
as attacking the Taliban, the two men were engaged in a race to be the first
to occupy Mazar-i Sharif. In southeastern Afghanistan, American troops