A Northern Alliance soldier on his way to the front line north of Kabul
Early last week, Mullah Ustad Mohammed Atta seemed certain, murderously so, that Northern Alliance forces would take Mazar-i-Sharif, a strategically crucial city in northern Afghanistan that has been the site of numerous bloody incursions over the past decade. It didn't matter that the Taliban had more men and more weapons there; Atta insisted that its morale was low and dropping by the minute, and that it was only a matter of time before defectors began spilling out. The 37-year-old commander had already led a premature and decidedly ill-conceived raid on Oct. 16, during which roughly 200 of his men were captured...
