U.S. wary of dominant role for Northern Alliance

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

NEW YORK, OCT. 22. There is growing irritation in the leadership of the Northern Alliance on the kind of support its forces are getting from the United States. According to military officials, the Alliance is raring to close in on Kabul but is not getting the kind of support it requires though the ground has been softened through two weeks of intense bombardment.

There is a clear political and diplomatic reason why the Bush administration has not thrown its full weight behind the forces of the Northern Alliance - there is yet to be a firm movement on the issue of an interim government in Kabul that will take over from the Taliban.

Washington is sufficiently worried about any dominance of the future arrangements by the Northern Alliance. Much of the apprehension has to do with the Alliance's track record of governance during the 1990s. Pakistan, a key ally in the current campaign, is staunchly opposed to a Government in Kabul run by the Northern Alliance or dominated by it.

Within the Northern Alliance there seems to be some rumblings on how a post-Taliban political set-up should look like. Key leaders are against any role for the Taliban, even the moderate ones. ``There is no place for the Taliban. All their leaders are narrow-minded,'' a military commander of the Alliance has been quoted.

Meanwhile, senior military and civilian officials at the Pentagon are refusing to divulge what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan by way of continuing commando actions. The reason for the secrecy is for the safety of the troops, it is maintained.

``I doubt if a coach is going to give away his game plan for today before he executes that plan. I think the American people understand why we have to keep the details of our operations confidential,'' the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, said.

It is being said that the U.S. had the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, in sight about two weeks ago. But there are two versions of what happened next: one is that the pilotless Predator plane spotted him and fired a missile that missed; the other is that Mullah Omar was in a mosque and therefore it was decided not to take him out then.

The U.S. has dismissed Taliban claims that it had killed some 20 to 25 American soldiers near Kandahar. A Taliban Minister had said that a helicopter carrying the American service personnel was brought down. Washington maintains that there have been only two combat-related casualties in an incident in Pakistan.

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