Fear grows in Tajikistan as Taliban comes under US attack

Just a few hours before the strikes, a Western intelligence officer told me, "the Taliban are dead. They're finished." He seemed to believe a few sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, a few hours of bombing from B1s and B52s, would be enough to rout the fundamentalist rabble. But even as the bombers delivered their payload , there was Osama bin Laden on al Jazeera TV, mocking the arrogance of the US in his combat fatigues, Kalashnikov to the ready, predicting that the Americans would suffer defeat as they had in Lebanon and Somalia.

The Tajiks, whose border with Afghanistan is more than 1,000 kilometres long, do not share the cocky confidence of the Western intelligence officer in their capital. Like other Central Asian countries with fundamentalist movements, they fear an explosion that could engulf the entire region.

"I think the third World War has started," said Ibrahim Isrofilov, a company manager. "For the people of Central Asia it is just beginning." Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban regime, has threatened Uzbekistan for agreeing to host US troops and aircraft. Like other Tajiks, Mr Isrofilov remembers the tonnes of weapons and ammunition that poured into Afghanistan in the last 20 years.

"The US armed them," he said. "It's not easy to eliminate the Taliban. These missiles can reach (the Uzbek capital) Tashkent and Dushanbe."

Tajiks believe that Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden will initially direct their anger towards Uzbekistan; just before last night's bombardments, the Taliban announced they were moving 8,000 more fighters to the Uzbek border.

But the Tajiks don't know what concessions their government made to Washington in secret. There are widespread rumours that US aircraft may be using an airport at Farhar, on the Tajik border.

"If it's true, it will be hell for Tajikistan," Mr Isrofilov predicted. If America wanted to bring peace to the Afghan people, he continued, "then why are they attacking the whole country, not just bin Laden?" There is little love for Pakistan in central Asia, and one Tajik source suggested the US would have done better to bomb Pakistan - "where the Taliban do their training" - than Afghanistan. "Maybe the government of Pakistan is no longer with them, but the mafiosi generals of Pakistan will secretly support them," the source continued.

Discord within the United Front - the opposition rebel movement established by the late Ahmed Shah Massoud - is reason for disquiet here because it could further destabilise an already dysfunctional neighbour, now under American bombardment.

Since Massoud was assassinated two days before the attacks on the US, rivalry between the Uzbek Gen Rashid Dustom and the other, mainly Tajik leaders, has intensified. Gen Mohamed Fahim took over Massoud's military command, while Dr Abdullah Abdullah, a physician and the "foreign minister" of the Front, was to be in charge of politics.

But the subsequent crisis has given Dr Abdullah a far more prominent position, with daily appearances on satellite television. The streets of Dushanbe were deadly quiet after the news broke. In the lobby of the Tajikistan Hotel, where staff and guests watched the first news of the bombardment on television, there was something ironic about the mention of C17s dropping humanitarian aid among the bombs.

"I'm sorry that it's come to this," said Matthew Kahane, the head of UN operations in Tajikistan. He noted that there has been a strong response to the UN Secretary General's appeal for $584 million in humanitarian aid for Afghanistan, and hoped that UN agencies and NGOs would be able to move as much aid as possible into the north-eastern enclave held by the United Front.

But the enclave is less than 10 per cent of Afghan territory. Residents of the United Front zone may be glutted with relief supplies, but no one seems to know how they will reach the Afghans who most need them.

All international UN staff have been withdrawn from Afghanistan. Several hundred Afghan staff remain inside the country, in great insecurity. The Taliban sealed off all UN communications with domestic staff two weeks ago, but Mr Kahane hoped they would somehow be able to alleviate the humanitarian crisis that so many have predicted.