In no man's land, Arab fighters spread terror

War on terrorism

In the twilight hours of the Taliban army, as its men surrender their weapons, between 500 and 600 of its Arab fighters have fled Kandahar and are spreading terror through the villages of southern Afghanistan.

"Don't go any further – There are Arab Taliban in Qalat," shouted the driver of a minibus to us yesterday as we reconnoitred the road to Zabol, an arid province next to Kandahar of which Qalat is the capital.

We turned around, but we later heard they had advanced further east to within 25 miles of Ghazni city. "There are about 500 to 600 Arabs near the village where I live," said Haji Rasuldat, a tough-looking second-hand car dealer, pointing a finger excitedly up the road.

As the Taliban army breaks up under the terms of an amnesty agreed with its leaders by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan prime minister-elect, some of its fragments, especially Arabs and Pakistanis, appear to be desperately seeking safety. Their exact numbers are impossible to check because local people are too frightened to go near them.

So far at least, the triumphant Northern Alliance has not produced Arab, Pakistani or Chechen prisoners to prove that foreigners were as large a part of the Taliban's fighting force as they claimed before the war. This may be because their numbers were always exaggerated or because they have been killed when they surrendered. The Arabs now on the run may believe that they will receive little mercy if captured.

Much of the countryside in this part of Afghanistan is now an unnerving no man's land, even without the presence of terrified Arabs fundamentalists. Afghan houses here are mud-brick fortresses with windowless, 20ft-high walls that could contain innocent families or several hundred soldiers. There are no checkpoints. We asked one man, pointing up the road, how far we were from the Taliban front line. "About ten kilometres," he said, which sounded comforting – until we noticed that he was pointing down the road behind us.

The situation since the Taliban surrender is now moving so fast that local commanders seemed bemused by what is happening. Qari Baba, the portly governor of Ghazni, says that all is secure in his province, but yesterday he was travelling in an armoured convoy of about 20 vehicles.

He denies that the Taliban of Zabol province have surrendered, although local people say that they have. Military commanders are keeping their fingers crossed. Said Azgar Alami, a leader of the Hazara Shia Muslim minority, said: "We are counting the seconds until the last Taliban garrisons give up."

The 320-mile-long road from Kabul to Kandahar has always been bathed in blood. It was the scene of a legendary march in September 1880 by Lord Roberts, then British commander in Afghanistan, the success of which made him a Victorian folk hero. Its surface has not improved much in the years since.

I had read that the Taliban's only construction effort was to resurface the road between their southern stronghold at Kandahar and the capital. This would have made sense from a military point of view. But it turns out that even this was beyond them. Twenty miles out of Kabul the asphalt peters out and the usual horribly bumpy Afghan road begins.

American jets streaked high overhead several times yesterday, but there has been no bombing in Ghazni itself for the past month. When it did happen, however, it was devastating. Close to the city's ancient citadel, the Taliban maintained a tank and artillery park, which has been torn apart by bombs. The mangled remains of a white helicopter has landed upside down amid the wreckage. It is a measure of the Taliban's demoralisation that they made no attempt to save their heavy equipment before it was destroyed.