Back in the 1960s someone described Islamabad as being half the size of Arlington cemetery and twice as dead. Whoever it was had obviously read and borrowed from "Dust in the Lion's Paw" written by the English traveller and writer Freya Stark and published in 1961, for in her book, reproducing a letter she had written in 1945, she had remarked: "Karachi, the Americans say, 'is half the size of Chicago cemetery and twice as dead'."

Karachi has changed, and so has the Islamabad of autumn 2001. It is stuffed to the brim with the world's media people, it is a hustling bustling city, and the atmosphere in its main hotel is highly reminiscent of Casablanca (but sadly there is no Rick's bar) in the early years of World War II.

This war now being fought will be a long drawn-out war. Those, such as President General Pervez Musharraf, who wish for a short, sharp encounter with a swift resolution will surely be disappointed. However, if the coalition does not manage to find Osama, there are hundreds of other bin Ladens on whom they can more easily lay hands, hundreds fuelled by ignorance in the guise of religion.

An illustrative story is told of Mulla Omar by those who went to visit him and try to persuade him not to upset members of the Buddhist faith, to leave the Bamiyan Buddhas alone, to tell him that they had been there long before the arrival of Islam, and that down the hundreds of years after the arrival of Islam no Muslim had objected to them. Omar's reply was that he wished he could leave them as they were, but that in a dream God had instructed him to destroy them, and that was that.

Experts on Afghanistan are many, experts on the Taliban are few. Many of the western embassies in Islamabad have dug out their old Afghan experts and sent for them so that they may be guided and informed. But all the old experts date back to the Afghanistan of the days of King Zahir Shah and of the Soviet occupation - none are versed in the ways of the Taliban. But we in Pakistan are fortunate; we have our own homegrown man, who knows the Taliban backwards, who has studied them and their terrible ways for 20 years while covering Afghanistan as a reporter.

Ahmed Rashid's book 'Taliban - Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia' took him 21 years to write. It was published in 2000 by I B Taurus of London and New York when 3,000 copies rolled off their press. As recounts a Reuters' report of October 21, "The initial print run soon climbed as the hijacking by would-be Afghan refugees of an Ariana Airlines flight to London sparked a brief spurt of interest in Afghanistan. By September 11 this year, Rashid had been picked up by Yale University Press and more than 25,000 copies had run off the presses. 'Taliban' had been translated into nine languages, including Japanese, Swedish, Dutch, Urdu and Dari - or Persian."

After the events of September 11 the print run in the US has soared to 350,000 copies and in Britain to 80,000 copies and, says Reuters: "Last week Ahmed's book on the once little-known fundamentalist militia hit number one on The New York Times bestseller list for paperback nonfiction, and after bobbing up and down on the list of the most popular books on sale by on-line retailer Amazon.com, it also hit the top spot there....

"The book gives a vivid account of the Taliban, based on numerous first-hand interviews and meetings, widespread travel over many years to Afghanistan and its neighbours, and describes the bewildering politics and ethnic mix that is Afghanistan..... In the prescient conclusion, Rashid issued a warning to the United States that their decision to abandon the Afghans to their own internecine and bloody battle for power after the Soviet threat disappeared with the withdrawal of their occupying forces in 1989 could return to haunt them...

"Today's policymakers are reading his book in a race for knowledge about the Islamic movement they ignored for so long. In Downing Street, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is said to refer to it, the book is a must-read at Japan's Foreign Ministry and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer cites it in public."

Have our men in Pakistan even read it? And if so, have they attempted to learn from it? One chapter of the book is devoted to bin Laden and the training camps he has set up across Afghanistan. The ISI, struggling without success to provide intelligence information to their coalition partners, would do well to have a look at it. Ahmed himself says the value of the book is broader than just the Taliban, that it is a primer for the new Islamic radicalism now fast spreading.

Ahmed Rashid is himself quite clear on how Pakistan should now approach the issue of a post-Taliban Afghan government. He now concludes:

"We should not try to create another Pakhtoon alternative (such as Pir Sayed Ahmad Gailani or Jalaluddin Haqqani) as a rival to King Zahir Shah. We should go along with the king and try to deliver to him a strong Pakhtoon element. The international community will back the king, and if Musharraf and his government are seen to be at odds with them we will once again be isolated, unable to repair our relations with neighbours Iran, Russia, and the Central Asian states. We can reduce the influence of the Northern Alliance only if we are backed by the international community, and that means supporting the king. Pakistan and its national interest have nothing to fear from supporting Zahir Shah. He will not now be anti-Pakistan. Afghanistan has been destroyed to such an extent that no future government will be able to be anti-Pakistan.

"As it is, Pakistan has lost all credibility with all Afghans of all ethnic groups because of its gross interference, mismanagement and the insane short-sighted backing of the Taliban. To win the trust of the Afghans we must go along with what they and the international community want - and that basically is a king-led government.

"When the 800-odd Afghan Pakhtoon leaders met in Peshawar last Wednesday with the purpose of setting up a counter-weight to the non-Pakhtoon anti-Taliban United Front, the Pakistan-backed Gailani, said to be a 'moderate' spiritual leader, told them that he had met the king in Rome, had told him of the need to set up a 'leadership council' of men who have the support of the majority of the Afghan people, and that the council would elect one member as chairman, and that member would certainly be the king.

But, what Gailani did not tell them was that the king has already formed a 120-man council in alliance with the United Front, and that his next step would be to call a Loya Jirga and select a new government.

"The feeling of the king's men is that Pakistan is backing Gailani in an effort to bypass the king and the United Front, and that the Americans are going along with it as they need Pakistan for their military campaign.

"Meanwhile, leaders loyal to the king are busy trying to create some sort of anti-Taliban resistance in the Pakhtoon belt of southern Afghanistan, hoping to speed up the military operations and the creation of the Loya Jirga. They are having a tough time.

Neither the Americans nor the British are helping with money, equipment or supplies, and Pakistan's ISI has either lost its touch or is purposefully holding back help on the intelligence side. Pakistan needs to get into some sort of gear and deliver on its promise that it would create Taliban defectors. It has been unable to so far deliver anything and its western allies are surely getting impatient."

Such are the views of our Afghan man, for whatever they may be worth.

Whilst Ahmed Rashid is courted by the foreign media and by foreign diplomats, our government continues to ignore him. Truly amazing, for they should now be seeking counsel from wherever they can find it and from whoever can enlighten them, no matter how controversial.