After the fall

Harvey Sapolsky, defense expert and professor of political science at MIT

It looks good. I don't know what's going to come next; who knows what's really gong on with Afghan politics. But it shouldn't matter to us. The goal was to destroy the Taliban and get al-Qaida, and while we don't have al-Qaida, we have the Taliban on the run. It's a victory.

There should be more on the way. Everybody who wants to fight the U.S.-assisted Northern Alliance will be at a disadvantage. Our air power makes a big difference. The Northern Alliance had 10 percent of the country; now they have, say, half of it. This couldn't have happened without our help. And going south, they'll still have this borrowed strength. It will only get better because we're now setting up bases in Tajikistan.

It's true, we haven't got much control over the Northern Alliance. We should tell them not to commit atrocities. But unless we want a lot of American ground troops to take their place, we don't have much choice but to accept what they do. I'm of the opinion that whatever we have there will be better than the Taliban. Whether it has a Pashtun mix, or more Tajiks doesn't matter. We shouldn't encourage the world's paranoia. People already think we run the world and they blame us for everything. We shouldn't feed the anger with a strong American presence. We shouldn't create the government there. We should want a more stable government, we should give them aid, but it's not our business to see who runs Afghanistan. We should only make sure the government doesn't harbor people who want to destroy American buildings and commit terrorist acts. And if we've done that, then we should get out.

John Voll, Islamic history professor at Georgetown University

A lot will depend upon the behavior of the Alliance troops as they take control of newly conquered areas. If there are many revenge killings and looting and disorder, then most people in the Muslim world will blame the U.S. for aiding violence and will argue that the U.S. is being hypocritical -- bombing the Taliban for being supporters of terrorism but rewarding the Alliance even when it engages in acts that are like terrorism. I do not think Muslim peacekeeping troops will make much difference, because the forces would simply be seen as military forces acting under orders. Sending Turkish troops would do nothing to improve such sentiment, since the Turkish military has a reputation in much of the Muslim world as acting to suppress Islamic movements.

I would hope that the Northern Alliance victories would allow for a suspension of bombing during Ramadan, but my guess is that military planners would not want to lose the momentum from the string of victories and would probably not suspend bombing until after some major victories in the south.

Retired Col. Dan Smith, chief of research for the Center for Defense Information

The fall of Kabul must be considered a victory. The U.S. did not expect Kabul to be so precipitously abandoned. Next comes more effort in tracking down the al-Qaida leadership and bin Laden. This has been a separate but parallel track with the Northern Alliance effort against the Taliban. The two are now intersecting more, but it can complicate the search because there will be more small groups the Special Forces will want to avoid or will have to fight if encountered as they search for al-Qaida.

Could the retreat be a trap? It seems too disorganized and fragmented to involve one. If the Taliban leadership can reestablish some control of hard-line fighters, they could begin some kind of guerrilla activity after a few weeks. The south is their ethnic stronghold, so they may find some assistance from Pashtuns living in the south or even from across the international border.

As for Northern Alliance atrocities, not all reprisals can be stopped no matter how big an international force may go in. What must be done is to internationalize control of the cities with Afghan assistance and begin the process of rebuilding civil society -- government, police, courts, the whole justice system.

Thomas Barfield is professor and chairman of anthropology at Boston University.

Given their dismal track record during the civil war, can we trust the Northern Alliance?

One of the problems is that the Afghan civil war is extremely complicated. When Borhanuddin Rabbani took over in 1992 [from the communists] there was no violence, all the communist and mujahedin factions joined together to form a new government. There was no bloodbath.

But because the outside world walked away, there was no international attention to getting the country back on its feet and the factions started fighting amongst themselves for power because each thought that they could get more out of the deal.

After 10 years of civil war now they know that they can't. When the Northern Alliance says it wants a broad-based government, they're honest. Everyone knows that they all had a chance and failed -- even the Pashtuns who ruled as the Taliban have learned that. Now they're much more amenable to creating a broad based government

How difficult will it be to create a new, multi-ethnic government in Afghanistan?

In the east, the Pashtuns have already revolted against the Taliban in some places like Ghazni, which is halfway down the road to Kandahar from Kabul, and there's been some unrest in Kandahar itself. You have to realize that the Taliban exploded out of Kandahar and took over 90 percent of the country really quickly. They never really won a battle because Afghans really want to be on the winning side. During the rise of the Taliban only one Afghan faction was able to retreat successfully with its forces intact, that was [former Northern Alliance Leader Ahmed Shah] Massoud. When most other Afghan factions retreat, their followers make a calculation about who's going to win and decide to ally themselves with successful invaders. Throughout history the country has turned to one side or another with remarkable rapidity without decisive battles because people calculate who's going to win and jump ship. Afghans are very pragmatic.

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