Northern alliance forces pursuing Taliban stragglers.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

BAGH DAOUD, Afghanistan _ As U.S. troops hunt for suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, anti-Taliban forces are pursuing stragglers from the puritanical Islamic militia and their foreign supporters hiding in mountains, villages and the capital of Kabul.

Northern alliance officials do not consider the bands of fleeing Taliban, either foreigners or Afghan, a threat to their control of better than two-thirds of Afghanistan.

But, they say, the fugitives represent a serious threat to law and order.

"There are no Taliban forces in the villages, but there are some Taliban hiding in houses," said Abdul Ahmad, the governor of Wardak province just south of Kabul.

Slowly we are going to start moving and we should disarm these people."

As Afghan factions haggle in Germany over a post-Taliban interim government, lawlessness is surging here, raising questions of how any future government will impose the order critical to distributing humanitarian ...