After a week of intensifying U.S. airstrikes against Taliban positions north of Kabul, the opposition Northern Alliance is gearing up for a major offensive southward toward the capital, despite misgivings among some alliance leaders that their forces remain outnumbered and are not fully prepared to attack.
The air war, which this week included the use of B-52 bombers on this front for the first time, has crippled the ruling Taliban's small but lethal air force, destroyed its air defenses, wrecked its military bases and training camps, disrupted its communications system and decimated its stocks of heavy military equipment such as tanks, trucks and artillery pieces, according to Northern Alliance officials.
Yet, some alliance officials and military commanders concede, the balance of power still favors the Taliban, mainly because of its large advantage in manpower. Before the U.S. air campaign began, the Taliban was estimated to field 40,000 to 45,000 fighters, as many as a quarter of them foreigners. The Northern Alliance has roughly 15,000 regular troops, although thousands more could be mobilized for a major action.
As the United States shows signs of ramping up its air war, possibly including air cover for a ground offensive, indications abound here that the alliance is preparing for war. In recent days, troops have been readying tanks and other equipment, test-firing mobile artillery pieces, mustering units in new uniforms and organizing military maneuvers and training exercises.
Leaders of the alliance, known here as the United Front, also have been discussing the offensive in detail. Today, at a meeting of the alliance's leadership council, participants reviewed "how we will carry out the fighting, how we will use our police in the cities [that are captured] and how to minimize civilian casualties," said a leading member of the council, Wahidullah Sabawoon, who serves as the alliance's finance chief.
In an interview, Sabawoon added, "They [the Taliban] have lost their air support, and their artillery power is very weak right now. But as for their manpower, we can't say anything. It's still more than the United Front."
He expressed concern that the alliance was going ahead with an offensive without sufficient preparation. "In these last five years, we've been living a defensive life, all the time under pressure," he said. "We need time" to go on the attack, "because mentally and materially we're on the defensive. We haven't reached that level to start an all-out attack against the Taliban."
Sabawoon lamented what he said was a lack of high-level diplomatic exchanges between the United States and the alliance. "They [U.S. leaders] don't recognize us as an official and proper partner in this campaign," he said. "We don't know about their future plans. This makes us worry."
The alliance has not had enough time to conduct training, faces huge transportation problems, lacks sufficient income and is plagued by shortages, Sabawoon added. Still, he argued that the offensive must go ahead, "because winter is coming, and the Taliban are preparing themselves to attack. . . . We want to attack them before they attack us."
The coming battle will not be easy, he warned. "We are ready for severe fighting, and we think terrorism is not an easy target. The Americans also should be prepared for severe and heavy fighting."
In an interview in an abandoned village near the front lines at Bagram air base, Gen. Babajan, the commander of one section of the front north of Kabul, said the Taliban's heavy equipment and military bases have been destroyed. But like other commanders, he said he is worried that the Taliban is still being reinforced with help from Pakistan's intelligence service, despite Pakistan's official support for the U.S.-led campaign.
Babajan charged that about 3,000 Islamic militants from Pakistan have crossed into Afghanistan and traveled to Kabul to aid the Taliban. Of that number, he added, about 1,000 have reached the front lines north of the capital.
After a day of heavy bombardment by B-52s Friday, the front north of Kabul was relatively quiet today. A few airstrikes by high-flying planes lit up the Taliban-held village of Estarghich with bright orange flashes in the morning, but the attacks tapered off by midday. The village lies at the foot of mountains to the west of a main road to Kabul.
Also today, the Defense Department reported that an unmanned Predator drone was lost over Afghanistan on Friday. It was the first Air Force drone lost in the war, but a CIA-operated drone went down near Kabul on Oct. 6, the day before the airstrikes began.
And the Associated Press reported that U.S. forces, hindered by bad weather in an initial failed rescue attempt Friday that left four rescuers injured, plucked a sick special operations serviceman from northern Afghanistan under the cover of darkness today, a Pentagon official said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the second rescue mission went "without a hitch."
Another sign of intensified activity came today as Marine AV-8B Harrier jump jets were launched from the USS Peleliu in the Arabian Sea this morning on a mission to strike a command-and-control center in southern Afghanistan, the first time jets from the Marine expeditionary force have been used in the campaign.
In the north, the military campaign changed significantly in the past week with the arrival of the B-52 bombers.
A Pentagon official, speaking in Washington, said that until last week the strikes had been "piddling," with Navy jets dropping one or two bombs at a time. Such small-scale strikes might eliminate antiaircraft sites or damage a headquarters, but would not inflict sufficient damage to punch a hole in Taliban lines and enable a Northern Alliance advance.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that bombing of the front lines had been stepped up sharply, with "something like 80 percent" of the airstrikes directed against Taliban troops as the giant B-52s dropped dozens of bombs at a time.
Underscoring the changed tone of the U.S. effort, Pentagon officials also disclosed that they plan to deploy a JSTARS surveillance aircraft to the region. JSTARS, which stands for Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, is designed to track hundreds of enemy tanks and trucks on the battlefield and coordinate ground and air attacks on them. Having it available to support Northern Alliance attacks is the strongest signal yet that the United States genuinely wants the rebels to advance against the Taliban.
Some officials said that the decision to deploy the JSTARS aircraft followed a Bush administration decision to uncouple the military campaign from political efforts to create an interim post-Taliban government for Afghanistan. Rumsfeld strongly disputed that assertion, saying that the military campaign had never been constrained by political concerns.
The number of Taliban casualties from the latest bombing is unknown, but alliance officials said the casualties have not been particularly heavy. More noticeable, they said, has been the absence from the skies of the Taliban's roughly 20 Russian-built MiG-21 and SU-22 fighter-bombers, or any helicopters or transport planes. Alliance officials said they have received reports that planes not destroyed have been hidden and helicopters have been dismantled and dispersed.
According to Mir Rahman, Babajan's brother and a brigade commander in his area of the front, the Taliban has lost its advantage in air power, as U.S. bombers have repeatedly sought out its military planes at airports and other locations.
"The Taliban's past success on our front line was because they had airplanes and bombed our area," Rahman said. "We are lucky that just now they don't have these things."
In the face of the U.S. bombing, Taliban fighters have been trying to find safety by moving as close as they can to the alliance's front lines, Rahman said. These efforts frequently result in firefights as alliance soldiers try to force them back.
"They want to come closer when they hear the sound of airplanes," said Mohammad Naeb, a 31-year-old alliance fighter, as he leaned on a wall of sandbags at a rooftop observation post in a deserted, battle-scarred village about 400 yards from Taliban positions. "When we see them, we fire at them, and they fire at us."
Naeb, a seasoned warrior who said he has been fighting in Afghanistan's wars for more than half his life, often overhears enemy radio transmissions in Arabic or Urdu. "They're scared of the airstrikes," he said of the Taliban generally. "Sometimes we hear them shouting to take cover. We're very happy about the airstrikes, because their morale is going down."
Khansaid Khattar, 34, the commander of the post and a 19-year veteran of the Afghan wars, said he hoped the U.S. airstrikes would be "intensified at the time we attack." Sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette on the rooftop in full view of Taliban positions, he expressed confidence that the bombing would allow the alliance to capture Taliban territory.
Others, however, are not so sure. "In Afghanistan, the weapons of war are the Kalashnikov, the grenade launcher and the 82mm mortar," an official in the alliance government said, referring to the AK-47 assault rifle and other portable weapons. "These are still with the Taliban, and they will make use of them. I think there will be heavy fighting, and they will defend their lines."
The military balance still favors the Taliban, he said, "because they are receiving lots of new arms and ammunition and soldiers from Pakistan, and they have prepared themselves against the Americans."
Meanwhile, a French journalist arrested last month in Afghanistan was released today and handed over to French diplomats on the Pakistani border.
Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report. 
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