Thousands near border await call from Afghans

MATTA, Pakistan – Seated around an earthen-floor living room
in this mountain village on Tuesday, a group of armed men awaited
word from Afghanistan to start fighting for the ruling Taliban.

“Our blood is the same. Whenever the Taliban needs us, we are
here,” said Qari Abdullah, a teacher who is among thousands
gathering on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to help fight
Americans and defend Islam.

But Abdullah and his cohorts, who represent a challenge to
United States policy and, potentially, military efforts in the
region, haven’t crossed into Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials say they can’t.

And Taliban officials don’t want them – yet – saying the
battle only involves air assaults that would endanger the men.

Late Tuesday night, movement leader Mulana Soofi Mohamad
traveled to Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to talk with Taliban officials
about a strategy for the volunteers, said Abdullah, spokesman for
the forces, which he said numbered 35,000. Pakistani officials
have put the number at 8,000.

Armed supporters around Abdullah in the room included a
nephew wielding an M-16 assault rifle that he said Americans
supplied to mujahadeen forces enlisted in the 1980s to fight the
Soviet Union.

“America’s President Bush said in one of his speeches that
this is the beginning of a crusade. He uttered that word,”
Abdullah said. “He challenged the faith of Muslims.

“Now we here are poor people. We work for our food, and
because of our work we survive. We don’t have time to leave our
beautiful children, our innocent children, and go away from our
homes.

“We had two options’

“But we had two options. Stay home. That would hurt our
faith. Or the other way, sacrifice our blood, head, body, heart.
This was the only gift we had to give the Afghan people. If they
don’t want this gift, we will still be ready all the time.”

This sort of resistance isn’t what U.S. officials had in mind
when they launched a military campaign in Afghanistan after the
Taliban refused to give up suspected terrorist leader Osama bin
Laden.

This week’s amassing of Pro-Taliban forces along the border,
south of Dir in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, is one of
several challenges facing the United States and Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf, who supports efforts to hunt down bin
Laden.

North of Islamabad, another group blocked the Karakoram
highway this week in the latest of many protests against
cooperation with the United States. They agreed Tuesday to reopen
that key route.

Bin Laden remains alive and uncaptured. The Taliban remains
in power. Rebels fighting Taliban troops say they want more help
and appear to have made little progress.

“Very few Taliban are dying,” said Abdul Ghafoor, 36, a
businessman who crossed from the Afghan capital Kabul five days
ago with his 5-year-old son.

“The Taliban were bad. I wanted to change the government. But
now my whole life has gone bad because of the Americans. Now
everyone is siding with the Taliban.”

Pakistan Frontier Police Sgt. Yousaf Khan said people are
suspicious of the United States because of past policies.

“They feel that Osama is not responsible for the Sept. 11
attacks as accused. They say: “First Americans used the Afghans to
fight the Soviets. Now the Americans want to fight the Afghans.'”

A network of recruiters organized the volunteer forces
drawing from valleys including this one, ringed by mountain peaks
with farms down below between busy little towns where strict
Islamic codes prevail and uncovered women are seldom seen.

It’s easy to enlist volunteers, with thousands of men
entering recruiting offices to join the jihad, or holy war, said
Tariq Mehmood, 28, a bearded teacher from Khawazkhela in the upper
Swat Valley.

For seven years, he said, he’s been recruiting in Mingora and
towns to the north. First he interviews candidates to test their
faith, he said. “We ask the question: “For what do you fight?'”

Before the air assault on Afghanistan, “we have to arrange
only one vehicle for taking them to training. Now, we have to
arrange seven or eight vehicles for training.”

The training camps, he said, are those that U.S. agents once
helped establish across this region when the Soviet Union was the
enemy. Training consists of 40-day to six-month sessions heavy on
physical drills and demonstrations of how to carry and load
weapons.

If Taliban leaders call for the forces along the border to
enter, and Pakistani guards still block them, Mehmood said, “then
we will make a plan what to do.”

  “We are all Afghans’

Though they come from Pakistan, the men at the border speak
the same language, Pushtu, as a majority of Afghan people. Many
have relatives in Afghanistan.

“By culture, we are all Afghans,” said journalist Hameed
Ullah Kahn, 24, of Mingora, down the Swat valley from Matta.

“If Osama bin Laden is the bad guy, why are Americans
victimizing the Afghan people?” he said. “Think about those people
you are bombing. What might you see in their faces? If I bring a
Kalashnikov, put it on your head, that is the effect you have on
the Afghan people.”