12.00 pm
LOS ANGELES - Afghanistan's ruling Taleban probably lacks the means to hand over Osama bin Laden, a prime suspect in last week's air attacks, even if it wanted to, according to an author who recently spent a month in the country with the Taleban's main opposition.
Sebastian Junger said bin Laden is largely responsible for helping to train the Taleban army, and that the Taleban would likely face stiff opposition without support from bin Laden.
"I don't think they're powerful enough" to hand over bin Laden, Junger told Reuters in a phone interview, shortly after returning to the United States from Moldova for the first time since the attacks. "Everyone thinks it's a matter of them choosing to hand him over. But he's so powerful."
Junger's documentary, Into the Forbidden Zone, has been pushed up from its original premiere date in October to September 25 on the National Geographic Channel as part of that cable network's new Frontline Diaries series.
The New York-based writer spent a month late last year with opposition leader Ahmad Shah Massoud, who was killed last Friday by two assassins posing as journalists.
Junger assessed the current standoff as the United States waits for the Taleban to comply with its demand that bin Laden be handed over. The fundamentalist Muslim regime has assembled a council of some 1000 clerics who have urged bin Laden to leave the country.
But Junger said the very existence of the Taleban's military is largely dependent on training from bin Laden's disciplined organisation, coupled with funding from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
"Bin Laden's men are what are holding the Taleban military together," he said. "Bin Laden's guys -- they're thousands of them and they're ready to die. They're very good fighters, very brave and serious, serious guys. I don't think the Taleban security services could get bin Laden even if they wanted to."
In fact, Junger said, Afghanistan has become largely a lawless society following a war to oust a Soviet-sponsored regime and then a civil war in which the Taleban rose to power.
He said the United States is partly to blame for the current situation. "We poured billions of dollars of weapons into that country when the Afghans were fighting the Soviets," he said. "As soon as the Soviets pulled out, we completely lost interest. We left behind a completely ruined country just chock full of our weapons. Now that's why Afghanistan has become such a haven for terrorists and criminals."
Junger said he has talked to his contacts in the opposition since the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington.
"They want US support," he said. "I was told directly by someone in the (opposition), they said, "Enough Americans have died in all this. We don't want you coming to Afghanistan dying here. We'll do that for you. Just give us the arms."
- REUTERS
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