Awaiting the endgame

The nature and timing of any possible American strike remain cloaked in mystery, report Khaled Dawoud from Islamabad, and Thomas Gorguissian from Washington
Conflicting reports are coming out of Afghanistan, the impoverished country ruled by the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban regime, as it braces itself for US strikes.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohamed Omar remains defiant, urging his people to prepare themselves for a "holy war" against yet another superpower. The Afghans defeated the Soviet Union and ended its occupation of their country in 1989; it will also stand up to the new enemy, he said, arguing that the US should withdraw its troops from the oil-rich Gulf region, change its policy of support for Israel and "leave Islam alone" if it wants peaceful relations with the Muslim world.
Yesterday, thousands of angry Taliban supporters staged the most violent anti-American demonstrations to date, setting fire to the empty building of the US embassy in Kabul. A Taliban defence official claimed 300,000 fighters had been mobilised in preparation for the US attack, though few gave his remarks any credence. A Pakistani NGO worker, forced to leave Kabul a few days ago, was certain the figure was false. "This is utter nonsense," he told Al-Ahram Weekly. "If they manage to deploy 30,000 to 40,000 fighters that would be a major success."
UN and other NGOs, however, have confirmed reports that up to 30 per cent of residents of major cities have left their homes and headed towards the border with Pakistan or to villages and nearby mountains.
On Monday the Taliban ordered the closure of all UN offices in Afghanistan, confiscated their communication facilities and seized more than1,400 tonnes of food supplies belonging to the World Food Programme (WFP), said Khaled Mansour, WFP spokesman in Islamabad.
The UN has said that its agencies are planning to provide assistance to an extra 2.5 million Afghanis because of the latest crisis. "Of those inside, we think that the number of vulnerable people will increase to something like 7.5 million," UN deputy humanitarian affairs coordinator Ross Mountain told journalists.
"On the basis of these kinds of estimates we think that there may be something like an additional 1.5 million who would be able to leave the country or seek to leave, the remainder being another million that would be further internally displaced inside the country."
The UN High Commission for Refugees said it expected some 900,000 Afghans could head for Pakistan, 400,000 to Iran, 50,000 to Turkmenistan and 50,000 to Tajikistan. Pakistan, meanwhile, insisted on the closure of its 1,200 mile border with Afghanistan. Governors of border provinces have declared that they will not allow any refugees to cross into Pakistan and have asked the UN to set up reception camps for Afghans fleeing their homes within Afghanistan.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul-Sattar added to the confusion on possible US war scenarios when he declared his country's opposition to reports of US plans to support the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Opposition within Pakistan to the deployment of US troops there in preparation for an attack against Bin Laden and his close associates remains strong, and it is likely that Washington will seek to base some of its troops, at least, in the former Soviet republics of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Yet Pakistan's support for any future scenario remains vital.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that the whereabouts of Bin Laden and thousands of his supporters remains a mystery. Rumours that Bin Laden has already left Afghanistan were, however, effectively scotched by Taliban officials, who said that while they had lost contact with him they believed he remained inside Afghanistan.
Saudi Arabia announced on Tuesday that it was severing diplomatic ties with the Taliban, leaving Afghanistan's rulers with just one embassy left, in Islamabad. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday he was not considering cutting diplomatic ties, claiming that the embassy in Islamabad represented the Taliban's only "window to the outside world."
The United Arab Emirates, the only other country with diplomatic relations with the Taliban, had severed links on Saturday.
In Washington, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld described the coming war as a "broad, sustained, multi-faceted effort" in which the mission would define the coalition. "We will see revolving coalitions that will evolve and change over time depending on the activity and the circumstance of the country," he predicted.
Any Pakistani involvement, American news reports suggest, is likely to come at a later stage, as ground operations inside Afghanistan are ordered. Small teams of specially trained US ground troops are reported to be already in Tajikistan, and a high- level American military team has already been engaged in intensive discussions with Pakistani military officials over plans for cooperation and Pakistan's role in the attack on terrorists.
Certainly the Bush administration appears to be courting Pakistan. It has already agreed to a generous re-scheduling of its $379-million debt to the US government and on Saturday Washington lifted the sanctions imposed on both Pakistan and India in 1998 following the countries' tit for tat nuclear tests.
On another front, President Bush on Monday ordered American financial institutions to freeze any assets belonging to Osama Bin Laden and 26 other people and groups suspected of funding terrorists. The aim, said the president, was to "starve the terrorists of funding, turn them against each other, rout them out of their safe hiding places and bring them to justice."
Most assets, it is suspected, are held outside the US. So Washington has enlisted its allies -- the G7 countries -- to help produce a coordinated plan to freeze assets of suspected terrorist organisations.
In the last two weeks US authorities have taken 352 people into custody and are looking for nearly 400 more who might have information on the 11 September terrorist attacks, revealed Attorney General John Ashcroft. And on Monday President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell confirmed that the government is preparing a report detailing evidence that will prove who was behind the attacks. But much of that report, they said, will remain classified material.
"As we are able to provide information that isn't sensitive and isn't classified, we will do that," Powell told reporters.
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