- ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Rockets
rained from the sky, hospitals ran short of blood, walking in the street
was dicing with death. Summary execution, highway robbery and murder were
commonplace.
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- This was life in Kabul under the mujahideen, the holy
warriors who defeated the Soviet army -- and residents fear more of the
same if their successors who form the Northern Alliance defeat the fundamentalist
Taliban and march into town.
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- U.S. President George W. Bush and Pakistan President
Pervez Musharraf share those fears. They have said repeatedly that they
do not want the Afghan capital to fall into the hands of the Northern Alliance,
or United Front.
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- Elated by the successes they have claimed on the battlefield
in the 48 hours since the Friday night capture of northern Mazar-i-Sharif
and with the fall of large swathes of the north, opposition Foreign Minister
Abdullah Abdullah was confident.
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- He told Reuters that the opposition would not rule out
entering the city if a political vacuum opened up.
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- "What they (opposition) did is quite clear to everyone
here," said one Kabul resident referring to the bloody struggle for
power that erupted with the clash of the two strongest and most ambitious
personalities in the mujahideen -- or holy warriors -- who had defeated
the Soviets.
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- ROCKETS RAIN DOWN
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- No sooner had they emerged victorious than minority ethnic
Tajik General Ahmad Shah Masood and Pakistan-backed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
of the majority Pashtun tribe unleashed their rivalry in Kabul.
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- On a fine August morning in 1992 just after dawn, the
fighters of Hekmatyar bombarded the city with 600 rockets before breakfast.
Cushioned from fighting throughout the Soviet invasions, Kabul residents
had never known such terror.
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- And it went on. For years.
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- Alliances shifted, mujahideen groups switched sides and
commanders defected and then returned. Law and order disappeared, warlords
governed their regions like fiefdoms and bandits made road travel a constant
hazard.
-
- A critic could be summarily executed. Unruly fighters
looted homes and didn't hesitate to kill those who resisted.
-
- And still the rockets rained down. They stopped only
when the Taliban swept into the city in 1996 in a swift advance that took
just hours with barely a life lost as Masood retreated to the north.
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- "We don't want the mistake made again, we don't
want history repeated and for Kabul to become the victim of different factions
fighting," said Hamid Sidig, an adviser to ex-king Zahir Shah, who
has lived in exile in Rome for 40 years.
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- Kabul residents have not forgotten the mujahideen power
struggle.
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- DEJA VU
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- "What will they do again?" said one resident
fearful that the lightning gains made by the opposition in a weekend will
bring the Northern Alliance -- a disparate grouping of former friends and
old foes forged just a year ago -- back into their city.
-
- Masood is dead, assassinated just two days before suicide
airliner attacks demolished the World Trade Center and sliced into the
Pentagon on September 11. Hekmatyar lashes out at the Americans from his
haven in Iran, but few take him seriously.
-
- But others may have similar ambitions.
-
- In Rome, a senior adviser to the former king warned the
Northern Alliance of the possible implications of taking Kabul and urged
them to keep a promise not to seize the capital.
-
- "They promised us they would not go into Kabul and
we expect them to stick to that promise," Abdul Sattar Sirat, a senior
representative of the former king, told Reuters.
-
- "We fear that if they enter Kabul, other powers
and factions would also enter from the southern part and so there would
be some confrontations," he said.
-
- And that could lead to an action replay of those bloody
rocket wars in which an estimated 50,000 Kabul residents were killed --
children as they slept, adults as they strolled in the markets.
-
- And so the Northern Alliance are hated by many.
-
- "About the opposition advances, we think they are
terrorists too. They are saying that the Taliban are terrorists,"
another resident said.
-
- "This is wrong. They are terrorists because they
are siding with the Americans."
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