ISLAMABAD: A scenario haunts those who know Afghanistan: the Taliban disperse into small groups and from inaccessible bases hidden across the moonscape terrain wage an endless low-level war that ensures the country has no stable government.

It is a scenario that must also haunt the Pentagon as they pursue their goal of eliminating any threat of future attacks on US interests by dismantling the Taliban and the network of foreign Muslim radicals assembled by Osama bin Laden.

“This is a Central Asian Somalia. You have a place where nasty little bits of vermin meet and reproduce,” said a diplomat from a country that is backing the attack on the ruling Taliban and their “guest” Osama bin Laden. “It’s a terrorist state where Osama and Mullah Omar are different sides of the same coin.”

So far, the United States has few results to point to from a month of bombing. Both the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and Osama — accused mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States — are reported safely sheltered in some secret hideout, probably deep inside caves in the barren hills.

The United States has destroyed what little ageing hardware the Taliban had, mostly old Soviet aircraft and anti-aircraft guns. But the Taliban, with 50,000 troops scattered across a country larger than France, present few targets for million-dollar missiles.

“We are coming up to a month and nothing has changed,” said an Arab officer based in Pakistan. “The Taliban don’t care — what is there to destroy? They want a land battle.”

In the early days of the attacks launched by the United States and Britain on Oct 7, the major cities were largely depopulated. Aid organisations reported up to 80 per cent of people were gone.

Now, visitors are reporting life for many people has returned almost to normal. Reporters in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Kabul all say markets are busy.

The Taliban have even handed back some supplies and offices taken from aid organisations when it looked earlier in the campaign as if civil order was disintegrating. Rising Afghan civilian casualties and the prospect of a humanitarian disaster among those normally kept alive by foreign aid are putting pressure on the United States, not the Taliban.

“There is so little to disrupt in Afghanistan,” said an aid official who lived in Kabul until forced to evacuate because of the imminent war. “It’s a daily life of subsistence so you don’t disrupt it by bombs.”

The Taliban also appear more confident than early in the conflict, ready to invite some foreign correspondents back and seemingly not intimidated by US bombs.

The anti-Taliban Northern Alliance cheer US bombing but have not advanced a metre towards Kabul. Air power alone will not defeat the Taliban, and they are quite willing to engage US land troops if Washington is ready to commit them.

“The Americans seem to be getting more aware of the difficulties of the situation,” Fazal-ur-Rahman, a senior research fellow at Pakistan’s Institute of Strategic Studies, told Reuters.

“A major emphasis on the US policy in Afghanistan was that they were expecting large defections from Taliban ranks, they were anticipating rapid moves by the Northern Alliance and they were anticipating some local reaction with Afghanistan because the Taliban regime had been really repressive,” he said.

None has happened. Now, as bombing continues, hopes have fallen increasingly on a political solution — a disintegration of domestic support for the Taliban, especially among the Pakhtoon tribes who have been the backbone of the movement.

“If at all there is a saner voice coming in, or a saner platform available, maybe they would be able to support it,” President Pervez Musharraf said. “This is not wishful thinking.”

However, there is no sign of agreement on a new Afghan government to give Taliban supporters that alternative. Foreign governments understand the need, saying Afghanistan must have an administration encompassing all ethnic groups, including alternatives to the Taliban for the Pakhtoon to support.

But UN envoy for Afghanistan Lakhar Brahimi said that after four days of intensive talks with Afghans and Pakistanis last week there could be a quick agreement — if the political will existed. So far, it evidently does not.

Without that agreement, the fear is of continued war even if the United States drives the Taliban from major cities. The Taliban are not a centralised force that can be easily targeted, they are men with AK-47s used to rough conditions.

“They probably underestimated the ability of Afghans to carry on fighting,” said Pervais Iqbal Cheema, head of the Islamabad Policy Research Institute. “It’s already a destroyed country, they know how to exist under these conditions.

“They have something like 50,000 men, though you have to disregard 40,000,” he said. “But there are 10,000 who are well organised and disciplined and experienced. They will put up a tough resistance — even if Kabul falls they will just retreat to the hills.”

If they were merely contesting with other similarly armed Afghan groups for supremacy, the chance of a protracted struggle like that in the past decade is much higher. —Reuters