“We cannot move before the snows melt,” said Mullah Ezat in his camp on the outskirts of Kabul. He is Jamiat-e-Islami’s chief commander in the area, with about six hundred men. “And before assaulting Kabul we will liberate an adjacent province first so that civilians can be evacuated. We must organize a unified military command of all the parties around Kabul, and our political work has only just started. God willing, we will coordinate our attack with a rebellion inside.”
On paper, the regime is still far stronger than the guerrillas. Well over a hundred thousand reasonably well-equipped men carry arms for it in its various military and paramilitary services. They have the advantage of being entrenched around main population centers and can call on the support of air force and heavy artillery. But how many will really fight? “Up to five thousand,” an American information officer in Pakistan told me. “Maybe as many as 400,000 in all of Afghanistan?” estimated Mullah Ezat.
Comments