Taliban's change of heart

By Fatemah Farag

In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper conducted 90 minutes before the American strike, Bin Laden had denied involvement in the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but called for a holy war against both Jews and Americans.

Omar also reportedly rejected a US offer to open talks with his fundamentalist Taliban movement. "There is nothing left to talk about after the missile raid," he is reported to have said on Tuesday. A US Embassy official in Islamabad, Richard Hoagland, confirmed that the United States wanted to re-open a dialogue with the Taliban. "We are of course interested in talking to the Taliban about Bin Laden and other international terrorist threats," he said.

AIP quoted Omar as saying that the US should be ready to pay compensation and apologise for its missile attacks against Afghanistan and Sudan in case it was unable to provide sufficient proof of terrorist activity in these countries. Omar went as far as to suggest that "if the United States wants to restore its esteem, it should remove President Bill Clinton from his post and withdraw its forces from the Gulf."

But the Taliban appears to have changed its tune on Bin Laden. First there were reports that Bin Laden's movements had been restricted to Taliban-controlled areas. Then, Mullah Omar expressed his displeasure with Bin Laden's anti-US statements in the course of a BBC interview last week. Part of his message to Bin Laden was that the Taliban would speak for themselves on how to respond to US action against their country. In a telephone interview with The News, an Islamabad newspaper, Omar is quoted as saying, "There cannot be two different and parallel emirates in Afghanistan. We have a central Taliban-led authority ruling the country and it ought to be obeyed."

Omar's displeasure was initially seen as an indication that the Taliban were willing to discuss the whole affair with the US. According to a Reuters report on Monday, the Taliban leadership had offered to put Bin Laden on trial before an Islamic Shari'a court if the US provided credible evidence against him.

This contrasted sharply with Taliban statements, made immediately after the strike, which were defiantly supportive of the militant leader. Mullah Omar had described the US attack as a "brazen manifestation of enmity against the Afghan nation." He denied that Bin Laden ran training camps in Afghanistan and vowed that "we will never hand Osama over to anyone and will protect him with our blood at all cost."

And the cost is of course high. The conciliatory comments made recently by Madeleine Albright to reporters suggesting that the Taliban could show its desire to be part of the international community by not harbouring "terrorist elements" are in stark contrast to the more menacing tone of remarks uttered by Secretary of Defence William Cohen: "If he [Bin Laden] has declared war against the United States, which he has; and if he is part of the command and control of that terrorist network; then if he is in the line of fire as such, that's his problem."

War against Bin Laden seems to obviously include war against those who protect him. An executive order banning assassinations has been in effect since the mid-1970s and the White House has stressed that it was not targeting Bin Laden specifically during its last strike.

According to AP reports, Taliban envoys at the United Nations had said they would be willing to discuss a solution if the US could prove terrorism charges against Bin Laden. Doubts have been cast, however, from within the US administration, as to the seriousness of the Taliban regarding this issue. In a recent interview with CNN, America's UN Ambassador Bill Richardson recounted: "I went to Afghanistan to talk to the Taliban some months ago to try to get them to extradite Bin Laden at the very least, and not let him engage in political or terrorist activities. Needless to say, the Taliban did not fulfil that commitment."

In the meantime, a federal grand jury in New York has indicted the suspected "international terrorist" on charges of terrorist acts against the United States. The exact date and details of the indictment are as yet unknown; however, it is clear that such a move opens the door to Bin Laden's capture and extradition. It is noteworthy that news of the indictment followed a closed-door US briefing on Monday at the UN Security Council in which Western diplomats claimed he was linked to 18 terrorist attacks. According to US reports, Bin Laden runs bases in the Afghan mountains close to the Pakistani border, as well as a compound in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.