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140 TALIBANTaliban trait. As US pressure on the Taliban to expel Bin Laden intensified,the Taliban said he was a guest and it was against Afghan traditionto expel guests. When it appeared that Washington was planning anothermilitary strike against Bin Laden, the Taliban tried to cut a deal withWashington - to allow him to leave the country in exchange for USrecognition. Thus until the winter of 1998 the Taliban saw Bin Laden asan asset, a bargaining chip over whom they could negotiate with theAmericans.The US State Department opened a satellite telephone connection' tospeak to Mullah Omar directly. The Afghanistan desk officers, helped bya Pushto translator, held lengthy conversations with Omar in which bothsides explored various options, but to no avail. 25 By early 1999 it beganto dawn on the Taliban that no compromise with the US was possibleand they began to see Bin Laden as a liability. A US deadline in February1999 to the Taliban to either hand over Bin Laden or face the consequencesforced the Taliban to make him disappear discreetly from Kandahar.The move bought the Taliban some time, but the issue was stillnowhere near being resolved.The Arab-Afghans had come full circle. From being mere appendagesto the Afghan jihad and the Cold War in the 1980s they had taken centrestage for the Afghans, neighbouring countries and the West in the 1990s.The USA was now paying the price for ignoring Afghanistan between1992 and 1996, while the Taliban were providing sanctuary to the mosthostile and militant Islamic fundamentalist movement the world faced inthe post-Cold War era. Afghanistan was now truly a haven for Islamicinternationalism and terrorism and the Americans and the West were ata loss as to how to handle it.