Yale University Press NEW HAVEN & 9 780300"089028 - Sito Mistero

30 ~ ISLAM OIL AND THE NEW GREAT GAME IN CENTRAL ASIAtake control of 12 of Afghanistan's 31 provinces, opening the roads totraffic and disarming the population. As the Taliban marched north toKabul, local warlords either fled or, waving white flags, surrendered tothem. Mullah Omar and his army of students were on the march acrossAfghanistan.2HERAT 1995:GOD'S INVINCIBLESOLDIERSIn March 1995, on the northern edge of the Dashte-e-Mango - theDesert of Death - plumes of fine white dust rose in the air above thenarrow ribbon of the battered highway that connects Kandahar withHerat, 350 miles away. The highway, built by the Russians in the 1950sskirted through the brush and sands of one of the hottest and mostwaterless deserts in the world. After years of war, the highway was nowrutted with tank tracks, bomb craters and broken bridges, slowing downthe traffic to just 20 miles an hour.The Taliban war wagons — Japanese two-door pick-ups with a strippeddowntrunk at the back open to the elements - were streaming towardsHerat laden with heavily armed young men in their bid to capture thecity. In the opposite direction a steady flow of vehicles was bringing backwounded Taliban lying on string beds and strapped into the trunk as wellas prisoners captured from the forces of Ismael Khan who held Herat.In the first three months after capturing Kandahar, the Taliban hadbroken the stalemate in the Afghan civil war by capturing 12 of Afghanistan's31 provinces and had arrived at the outskirts of Kabul to the northand Herat in the west. Taliban soldiers were reluctant to talk under thegaze of their commanders in Kandahar so the only way to learn somethingabout them was to hitch lifts along the road and back again. In the confinesof the pick-ups where a dozen warriors were jam-packed with cratesof ammunition, rockets, grenade launchers and sacks of wheat, they weremore than eager to share their life stories.They said that since the capture of Kandahar some 20,000 Afghansand hundreds of Pakistani madrassa students had streamed across theborder from refugee camps in Pakistan to join Mullah Omar. Thousands