First Person Global.(war correspondent comments on nature of war in Afghanistan)(Brief Article)

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan you spend a lot of time sitting on cushions--Persian style--talking to commanders, drinking tea with commanders, sitting silently opposite commanders, smiling politely. The first thing you notice is their boots: Soviet Army style, but very clean. They don't look like the boots of men who spend time tramping around the hills. Then look closer. Their boots are not, in fact, Army issue at all. They're handmade of soft leather with thin, smooth soles. They look military but are civilian at heart. That's all you need to know about most Northern Alliance commanders on the Kabul front.

These days I often see General Babajan of Bagram airport on CNN. He is usually up in his ruined control tower, wearing pressed fatigues and a Soviet officer's belt, gesturing grandly toward the Taliban. He looks, in fact, rather impressive. But when I first met him he hadn't yet become a media star. When I arrived with three other correspondents at Bagram, we found him sitting under a shade tree outside his mud-brick house near the airfield. He was chatting with his officers, sitting on cushions and eating grapes. This was two kilometers from Taliban positions, in a strategic spot that at that very moment was probably being discussed in a dozen situation rooms from the Pentagon to submarines in the Indian Ocean.

That was six weeks ago. I notice now from the TV footage that Babajan and his men have ...