In The Cross Hairs

By Tim McGirk/Quetta

The Taliban has no spy-in-the-sky satellites. It can't bug a telephone or crack an enemy code. But even so, its intelligence service is murderously effective--both inside Afghanistan and in neighboring Pakistan, where Taliban spies are suspected of having carried out several assassinations in the past two years.

The Taliban is strongest where U.S. intelligence is weakest: in the bazaars, mosques and teahouses of Afghanistan. It has thousands of informers inherited from KHAD--the feared secret police of the former Afghan communist regime--working alongside Muslim clerics in nearly every Afghan village. And it has no monolithic central headquarters that can be taken out with a missile. "The Taliban's command-and-control center," says a foreign diplomat, "is two mullahs sitting on a rug with a radio transmitter."

In this shadowy war, the Taliban's intelligence chief, Qari Ahmadullah, has scored some impressive hits. His biggest coup: catching Abdul Haq, 43, the Pashtun commander who slipped into Afghanistan two weeks ago to lay the groundwork for a revolt against the Taliban. Afghan sources tell TIME that Taliban spies dangled a juicy piece of bait in front of Haq: several regional Taliban commanders were ready to defect.

It was a trap. As soon as Haq crossed over the mountains on horseback into Logar province, he was tailed by Taliban operatives who captured him on Oct. 21 and, after hours of interrogation, shot him and two of his comrades. Six of Haq's men are still under arrest, along with 20 other supporters--dousing U.S. and Pakistani hopes of an uprising among the country's Pashtun tribesmen. Haq's execution, says a foreign diplomat in Islamabad, "will make any tribal chieftain hesitate before turning against the Taliban." Ahmadullah couldn't hide his glee. In a satellite-telephone interview with a Peshawar journalist, he exulted, "Anyone who tries to enter Afghanistan will meet the same fate as Abdul Haq."

The threat is aimed at another pro-Western Afghan, Hamad Karzai, a supporter of exiled King Mohammed Zahir Shah. Karzai has been on the run in Afghanistan for weeks, dodging Taliban bullets in the Uruzgan mountains north of Kandahar. Urbane, well educated and hailing from an aristocratic Pashtun family, Karzai is Washington's best--and perhaps only--chance to win over the southern tribes. If he can stay alive.

Karzai's foray into Afghanistan was more discreet than Haq's. On Oct. 8, Karzai spread word that he was traveling to Rome to confer with the aging King. Instead, Karzai and a group of armed and loyal tribesmen grabbed a sat-phone and headed into southwest Afghanistan, the Taliban stronghold. For weeks, Karzai met with tribal elders, probing what success an insurrection backed by U.S. firepower might have against Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Karzai eluded the Taliban until last week, when its network of spies picked up his movements along the mountain trails of Uruzgan. On Thursday, Karzai and his men blasted their way clear of a Taliban ambush--after calling in U.S. helicopters, according to a Taliban spokesman. (The Pentagon said U.S. aircraft were sent to help.) The Taliban also claims it seized an airdrop of 600 AK-47 rifles meant for Karzai. The regime insisted that he had been "under siege" and was airlifted out of Afghanistan on Saturday. But in a call later that day to his family in Quetta, Karzai said he was safe and still in Afghanistan.

Ahmadullah is one of Omar's most trusted men. A mullah from the southern city of Ghanzi, he was a military commander with a string of conquests before Omar anointed him head of intelligence. He is one of the cooler heads in the ruling Taliban council. Relief workers who dealt with him as governor of the northern Takhar province say Ahmadullah allowed food convoys into famine-struck areas held by the Northern Alliance, knowing that full stomachs might earn some gratitude beyond enemy lines.

Within Afghanistan, Ahmadullah's men uncovered two plots in Mazar-i-Sharif by commanders to overthrow the Taliban. The security services also discovered a band of opposition bombers in Kabul. Death was swift in both cases. The accused were strung up at a crossroads in warning to all who would defy the Taliban.

The Taliban's reach extends into Pakistan. Haq accused the Taliban of murdering his wife and son in 1999 at their Peshawar home. Karzai suspects the Taliban of assassinating his father, a noted Afghan parliamentarian, in Quetta two years ago. Pakistan's military intelligence, known as the ISI, has long aided the Taliban--and, sources say, some agents are doing so still. "You're asking the ISI to change loyalties at the flick of a switch. It's not that easy," says an Arab diplomat.

Can the Taliban's spy network be beaten? Many Afghans say they're willing to try. Says one Western diplomat in Peshawar: "They're lining up, saying, 'Give us money and sat-phones and we'll deliver bin Laden and Mullah Omar.' But it's a long way before those promises come true."

--With reporting by Rahimullah Yusufzai/Kandahar and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by Rahimullah Yusufzai/Kandahar and Mark Thompson/Washington