In their flowing kameez shalwar robes, they stood out instantly. The Taleban’s new army of Pakistani volunteers, loitering in the city’s squares by day and retreating to its mosques to sleep by night. Thousands of Pakistanis, answering Osama bin Laden’s call to arms, have poured into Jalalabad against a tide of refugees.
The youngest and most fervent — up to 8,000 of them according to Taleban officials — have already been sent to the front lines north of Kabul and around Mazar-i-Sharif. The older men who have lived their lives by the gun in Pakistan’s lawless frontier provinces, sit waiting for their marching orders. Four weeks of bombing and the arrival of the Pakistanis have changed the face of this strategic city 60 miles into Taleban-held Aghanistan. The reinforcements throng Jalalabad’s mud-walled streets, and the mood is one of palpable defiance. “It’s not war yet,” said one Taleban supporter who gave his name as Zabihullah. “Let the American troops come down to the ground and then there will be a real battle.”