PESHAWAR: Like anyone who knows Afghanistan, who has driven the long, rocky roads under that impossibly clear blue sky, who has dropped a few notes to the urchins who shovel dirt into the potholes to earn their dinner, who has seen the double amputee landmine victim cheering his friends playing football, or heard the Kabul dogs howling in the night after a rocket strike on the north of the city, I simply cannot understand how it came to this.

Nobody can argue with the aim of the war. Justice for the 6,000 dead in New York must be done and seen to be done and destroying Osama and Al Qaeda is an integral part of that. But this war, as it is being fought, will not make the world a better, safer place. It will make it far more dangerous.

The Taliban leaders may be bad but they are not mad. They have a coherent ideology fusing modern, resurgent Islam, the centuries-old customs of the Pashtoon tribes, from which they are largely drawn, and a bizarre nostalgia for the simple, predictable village life that they imagine existed before the Soviets forced them into a life of refugee camps and war.

Mullah Omar and his top commanders believe, with some justification, that they rescued their country from the violent anarchy of the post-Soviet years. You cannot bomb these men into submission. Nor will the Taliban footsoldiers be particularly worried by the forces ranged against them. Whoever advised the Americans to mock the Taliban’s antiquated weaponry in the ludicrous, boasting broadcasts to Afghanistan last week had not done their research. Many of the first Mujahideen fought the Soviets with muzzle-loading muskets or First World War-vintage Lee Enfields.

Nor is threatened destruction much of a disincentive. After a revolt in the western city of Herat in March 1979, the Soviets carpet-bombed the city, killing between 5,000 and 25,000 people. It did nothing to deter insurrection. This time, Taliban casualties have been almost farcically light and the damage done has been minimal. We are told that the Americans have knocked out the Taliban ‘command and control centres’. I have seen many of these. They largely consist of a man sitting on a rug with a radio, an ancient, unconnected telephone and the mother of all teapots.

There are signs that the US and the UK are beginning to comprehend this and the near impossibility of tracking down Osama. Even if the Taliban are rolled back to a rump of territory in the southern strongholds, Osama would still have plenty of boltholes.

The Afghans are now falling in behind the Taliban. The strikes are swiftly radicalizing what was an essentially moderate country. That is not only tragic but dangerous. A few days before the 1998 strikes, I asked a guard outside the foreign ministry in Kabul about Osama. He did not know who I was talking about.

Nor did the men in Guldara. Two years ago, few Afghan fighters I spoke to could point to their own country on a globe, let alone discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now, of course, they all can talk about the ‘Amriki’ and its ‘tyranny’ against Muslims.

So no defections, no coups against Mullah Omar, no handing over of Osama are likely - just a steady rallying to the Taliban flag, mounting civilian casualties, growing extremism and an unfolding humanitarian disaster.

On Saturday, we got a taste of what is to come. Domestic opinion in the US and the UK, the of approach Ramazan and the growing fragility of the coalition mean that ‘a result’ is needed within a month. The Americans are likely to commit hundreds more ground troops, probably with the SAS hanging on to their camouflaged coat-tails, in an increasingly desperate bid to get their man.

It is difficult to exaggerate quite what a disaster for everybody that will be. The Northern Alliance would be permanently tarred as Western stooges, the rest of the country would take their guns and go to fight the invaders. So, as they have told me repeatedly in recent weeks, would all the commanders currently watching developments from Pakistan.

Zarameen is an old friend from Jalalabad. He fought the Soviets, fought the puppet regime that Moscow left behind and fought against the Taliban until forced into exile. Three weeks ago, he asked me if I could arrange for him to get weapons to fight them again. On Saturday, he told me he was getting ready to defend ‘his country’.

Western troops in Afghanistan just would not win. They would be forced, like the Soviets, into isolated, fortified firebases. The idea of 150 US or Royal Marines dug in on some hilltop in Nangahar facing 1,000 Zarameens does not bear thinking about.

There has to be a pause in the war. Some carefully bought defections could strengthen the Northern Alliance. That would shock the Taliban. Funds and weapons could be channelled to those within Afghanistan, or based currently in Pakistan, who would be happy to see the end of Taliban rule.

More pragmatic elements within the Taliban, who are concerned about the damage Mullah Omar is doing to their country, can be wooed. The instinctively moderate, flexible nature of the vast majority of Afghans can be used to our advantage if we stop forcing them to take sides.

We should tell the Taliban that the bombing will stop for a set period so that a conference, that will include them, can meet to discuss the future of the country and of Osama. If they do not agree, the attacks can start again, preferably after Ramazan. In the meantime, flood the country with aid and talk about addressing the real causes of terrorism and Muslim radicalism: poverty, repression and skewed policies in the Middle East.

When I think about the huddled masses of the refugees, about the small, stone-covered graves that are appearing outside every village I know we have to halt the escalation before it is too late. But when I listen to Rumsfeld and Bush and Blair and Straw and their macho, ignorant and fatally flawed rhetoric it is hard to be optimistic. —Dawn/The Observer News Service.