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54 ~ TALIBANthey would help rearm the anti-Taliban alliance. Meanwhile Pakistan andSaudi Arabia sent diplomatic missions to Kabul to see what help theycould offer the Taliban. Appeals from the UN and other internationalbodies for a cease-fire and mediation failed to receive any hearing fromthe belligerents. The region was now deeply polarized with Pakistan andSaudi Arabia allied to the Taliban and the other regional states backingthe opposition. The Taliban were still not to receive the internationalrecognition they so desperately wanted. 'We don't have a friend in theworld. We have conquered three quarters of the country, we have capturedthe capital and we haven't received even a single message of congratulations,'said a wistful Mullah Mohammed Hassan. 17Yet it appeared that Mullah Omar's refusal to compromise with theopposition or the UN, along with his unshakeable faith and his determinationto achieve a military victory, had finally paid off. Kabul, thecapital of Afghan Pashtun kings since 1772 which had been lost for thepast four years to Tajik rulers, was back in the hands of the Pashtuns.The student movement, which so many had predicted would never beable to take the capital had done just that. Despite their enormous losses,the Taliban's prestige had never been higher. The cost of their victoryhowever was the deepening ethnic and sectarian divide that was clearlydividing Afghanistan and polarizing the region.'War is a tricky game,' said Omar, who remained in Kandahar anddeclined to even visit Kabul. 'The Taliban took five months to captureone province but then six provinces fell to us in only ten days. Now weare in control of 22 provinces including Kabul. Inshallah [God willing]the whole of Afghanistan will fall into our hands. We feel a militarysolution has better prospects now after numerous failed attempts to reacha peaceful, negotiated settlement,' he added. 18 Northern Afghanistan nowappeared ready for the taking.4MAZAR-E-SHARIF 1997:MASSACRE IN THE NORTHEveryone expected a Taliban spring offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif, thelast stronghold in northern Afghanistan of the anti-Taliban alliancewhich was under the control of General Rashid Dostum and hisUzbeks. During the long winter months there was growing panic in Mazaras food and fuel supplies ran out due to the Taliban blockade and theAfghani rate of exchange doubled to US$1 and then tripled as wealthyMazar citizens fled to Central Asia.Although most of Afghanistan's population is concentrated in thesouth and was now under Taliban control, 60 per cent of Afghanistan'sagricultural resources and 80 per cent of its former industry, mineral andgas wealth are in the north. During the last century, Kabul's control ofthe north had become the key to state building and economic development.For the Taliban, determined to conquer the country and keep itunited, the autonomy enjoyed by the northern warlords had to be crushed.Yet when the Taliban offensive finally came in May, nobody expectedthe bloody drama of betrayals, counter-betrayals and inter-ethnic bloodshedwhich was astounding even by Afghan standards and would send theentire Central Asian region into a tailspin.Ensconced during the winter in the Qila-e-Jhangi, the Fort of War,on the outskirts of Mazar, Dostum suddenly found himself promoted byneighbouring states and many Afghans as a saviour and the last hopeagainst the Taliban. Mazar, situated in the Central Asian steppe whichbegins north of the Hindu Kush, is culturally and ethnically as far awayfrom Kandahar as Kandahar is from Karachi. The nineteenth-century fortis a surreal pastiche of a European baronial castle with a moat and defenceditches and a fantasy from the Arabian Nights with its massive, mud-