Eastern and southern Afghanistan
Jalalabad and Kandahar each found themselves controlled by
groups of Pushtun notables. However, the pattern of rule in the two
areas proved quite different. In Jalalabad, after a certain amount of
tussling, Haji Abdul Qadir, a prominent member of the Arsala fam-
ily which also included the Kabul-area Pushtun commander Abdul
Haq, emerged to head a local shura which controlled the city. A
pragmatist, Qadir sought to maintain civil relations with both
Rabbani and Hekmatyar (Gille, 1994: 5). His pragmatism also
extended to tolerating the cultivation of opium, and the training of
Arab extremists, in the vicinity of the city (Rubin, 1995a: 277). It
was here that Osama Bin Laden settled when he returned to
Afghanistan in May 1996 (Bergen, 2001a: 93).
In Kandahar the situation was more complicated. In different parts
of the province, various commanders carved out particular areas of
territory over which they held sway, and in the city itself a number
of armed groups were present: adherents of the Jamiat, the Ittehad
and Gailani’s party clashed from time to time (Dorronsoro, 1993: 5).
In 1992, the situation in the Kandahar area was relatively quiet, but
it deteriorated sharply in 1993 and 1994. Haji Abdul Latif’s son Gul
Agha was formally the governor, but lacked his father’s leadership
skills (Davis, 1998: 47). The Jamiat leader, Mullah Naqib, was
ultimately to surrender Kandahar to the Taliban without a fight,
prompting suspicions that he had been bought, but there is also evi-
dence that he was following Rabbani’s instructions: unusually, he
remained in Kandahar for some two months under the Taliban before
returning to his home district (Davis, 1998: 49–50). He was to resur-
face in 2001, perhaps confirming the prudence of his approach.
Northern and western Afghanistan
Mazar-e Sharif became Dostam’s main power-base. He ran an
administration which purported to be liberal, although hardly in the
classical sense. Lower-level Parchamisfound a niche there, and
local Mujahideen commanders were brought under Dostam’s con-
trol (Dorronsoro, 1993–94). The relative stability of the north, and
208 The Afghanistan Wars