(NEW YORK, 26 November) -- With the path paved by U.S. carpet bombing, the armed forces of the Northern Alliance swept into military control throughout virtually the entire north—populated mainly by Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara nationalities—and much of the rest of Afghanistan in the second week of November. The capital city of Kabul was seized on 13 November. Since then cities and territory in the south have fallen under the control of forces, including defectors from the Taliban regime, based on the Pashtun nationality. Taliban army units apparently negotiated a surrender in their last northern holdout in the city of Konduz on 25 November. As of this writing the southern city of Kandahar is the last population center under nominal Taliban control.

The inevitable implosion and collapse of the thoroughly isolated—abandoned after September 11 by the U.S.-client regimes of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—and increasingly unpopular Taliban theocracy is now a fact. The end of Taliban rule—highlighted by policies that included the banning of music and television; strict dress codes; public executions by burial and stoning for alleged adultery and sodomy; and banning of jobs and education for women and girls—has been clearly welcomed by most in northern cities, but is qualified by the bloody and repressive legacy of the semi-feudal tribal warlords of the Northern Alliance who are replacing them.

Much of the remaining armed resistance faced by the U.S. war machinery and the Northern alliance are apparently not indigenous Afghans, but remnants of fighters trained and recruited to the al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri from other Arab and Islamic countries. [These so-called "Afghan Arabs" had their origins from the period when Washington, working through the Pakistani military dictatorship and Saudi ruling family, organized and financed a massive covert war against a reform-minded Afghan government and later the invasion of the country by Soviet troops to prevent the government’s collapse. Bin Laden was a key ally of the CIA’s $4 billion covert war.] They are likely to be obliterated in the coming weeks by U.S. and indigenous Afghan forces.

The reversal of fortune for the Northern Alliance is partly the result of a change in U.S. military tactics, under political pressure, towards the carpet bombing of Taliban front lines defending the northern city of Mazar e-Sharif. Prior to that, in the first month of the U.S. air strikes, the bombs were focused on Afghan cities. The rising civilian death toll, the generation of refugees, and the looming threat of mass starvation were exacting a not-insignificant international political toll for Washington.

The Bush Administration had hoped to bypass the national alliance, which is politically aligned with and militarily supplied by Russia, Iran, and India. The plan, which turned out to be wishful thinking, was that massive U.S. firepower would, in and of itself, dissolve the Taliban and allow U.S. troops to walk in and dictate political arrangements.

Instead, what became posed after one month of this, was the massive introduction of U.S. ground troops, heavy U.S. casualties, political isolation, and intensified Afghan and world opposition to direct U.S. opposition.

By week five, Washington shifted and moved to facilitate the Northern Alliance advance. Through its foreign minister, the Northern Alliance assured Washington that it would not seize Kabul directly. But military logic and momentum dictated otherwise and Kabul was pocketed. Now, the pressure from Washington is certainly intense on the Northern Alliance to submit to a U.S./UN provisional power—a protectorate—that has yet to be conceived by the UN bureaucracy or the Bush Administration, let alone organized and delivered on the ground.

As the new realities on the ground shape up, what will be posed is a physical replacement of the Afghan bodies and structures now being put in place by foreign troops. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has put 6,000 British troops on forty-eight hour alert for dispatch to Afghanistan. What could develop is the political fiasco of Washington and London setting up a military confrontation with the Northern Alliance. At any rate, the next period will show that, military success aside, Washington will not be able to impose a stable administration in Afghanistan.

Washington must also face growing turmoil and instability in Pakistan. The Musharraf military regime is the big loser in the events since the fall of Mazer e-Sharif. The Pakistani rulers are widely hated by millions of Afghans for their central role in both the creation of the Taliban and its seizure and consolidation of power. The seizure of Kabul by their Northern Alliance antagonists and the entrenchment of a regime in Afghanistan hostile to Pakistan and allied with India, Iran, and Russia is deeply jarring to the Pakistani ruling class and its military and intelligence apparatuses. They will be tempted to move their army into the southern half of Afghanistan. But Washington is certain to reject such thinking with extreme prejudice.

Washington’s calculation is that it can now concentrate and direct its operations in the south: create bases with other European imperialist troops in tow; secure a Pashtun armed dependency which also is necessary to prop up Musharraf; focus on crushing al Qaeda and the high drama and unrestrained hype of the search and kill of bin Laden. Then, claiming a glorious victory and the end of the hated Taliban and the dreaded bin Laden, Washington will move to seize the momentum to prepare the political conditions to militarily move against Iraq and politically against Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. And to impose a settlement in Palestine. That’s the plan anyway.

Washington is on a roll—for now. Perhaps the greatest danger they face is that they may start to believe their own propaganda. "Phase II" is looming. But the only things certain are uncontrolled forces and unintended consequences.

Ike Nahem is a New York locomotive operator.

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