This is a continuation of the 122-post thread re US War Strategy, "key to"...

There is evidence that the core of Afghanistanian radical fanatacism is losing its political control at the edges.

From the UK press:

Survivors who made it out of Taliban-controlled areas last week gave the first eyewitness details of how the country's rulers are turning on their own people in an attempt to terrify them into fighting and not supplying any succour or support to America, the enemy.

But the Taliban regime was looking increasingly fragile yesterday as large numbers of Afghans refused to obey their orders and, in some instances, came close to outright revolt.

In at least one province the Taliban authorities were forced to temporarily withdraw after local people challenged their rule. In Khost, a strategic city on the eastern border of Afghanistan and critical to any defence of the country, the Taliban governor was forced to leave after local tribesmen refused his orders to join defence militias.

Elsewhere along the Pakistani frontier, local people in Paktia and Paktika provinces have told the Taliban that unless the Arab fighters associated with Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group are withdrawn from their towns and villages they will refuse to obey any of the government's orders. About 50 Arab families have been evicted from their longstanding bases around the eastern city of Sorobi, according to refugees coming from Afghanistan.

'That's as close as you can get to an outright revolt without risking execution,' said one senior opposition leader in Peshawar last week. There have been similar scenes in Ghazni province - far closer to Kabul, the capital, and previously a Taliban stronghold.

The Taliban have been forced to set up roadblocks to prevent Afghans fleeing major cities - in direct contravention of their orders. According to refugees, hundreds of people were yesterday being stopped at one checkpoint set up near Pul-e-Sharqi prison, a grim complex built by east Europeans on the road east of Kabul. Many of those fleeing are trying to escape the press gangs to which the hardline Islamic militia have resorted to fill the ranks of their army.

Mullah Mohamed Omar, the reclusive one-eyed cleric who is the spiritual leader of the Taliban, was so concerned by the growing rebellion that he last week issued an unprecedented threat to any Afghans who disobey the Taliban's orders: they would be treated in the same way that collaborators with the Russians were treated during the Afghan war of resistance in the Eighties when suspects were tortured and staked out in the sunshine with their eyelids sliced off, or castrated and hung from trees.

That's inspire them to see the truth, all right!! Hang 'em until they have an epiphany!!

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Regards,

A