...AS Nato struggles to find more troops to send to Afghanistan, the alliance appears to have achieved the impossible, but dangerous feat of uniting previously disparate warlords, tribes and militia.
...a "Taliban triumvirate" that has been operating since spring of this year.
The most colourful member is Hekmatyar - self-styled Lion of the Mountains, who was considered to be so effective as an anti-Soviet commander that the CIA and ISI allocated the highest percentage of all covert aid to him.
...Then there is Haqqani, who also fought against the Soviets with American support before moving to the Taliban.
...But Haqqani, now an elderly Islamic scholar, has excellent high-level contacts in the Arab world, especially among oil-rich fundamentalists in the Gulf. One of his wives is a Kuwaiti aristocrat, and members of the Saudi Arabian royal family are thought to have contributed to the construction of several large religious schools under his control.
...The third member of the triumvirate, the lesser-known Mullah Mohammed Dadullah, has recently become the Taliban's top military commander.
...Meanwhile, the Afghan president Hamid Karzai, holed up in Kabul, is increasingly marginalised
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1410642006
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