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associating himself so directly with the Prophet, Omar was asking to be called the commander not just of Afghanistan’s faithful, but of Muslims everywhere. For Pashtuns, there was additional meaning in the gesture. Omar was also associating himself with Ahmad Shah Durrani, whose mausoleum the shrine abuts and who acquired the cloak from the Amir of Buhkara in 1768. Durrani, still popularly known as ‘Baba’, the Father of Afghanistan, once ruled from Kandahar a Pashtun empire that stretched as far as Delhi.
    ‘In his time,’ according to the ornate lapis lazuli inscription that runs around the roof of his mausoleum, ‘from the awe of his glory and greatness, the lioness nourished the stag with her milk. From all sides in the ear of his enemies there arrived a thousand reproofs from the tongue of his dagger.’ 1
    The whole fantastic episode was filmed by the veteran cameraman Peter Jouvenal, who happened to be in Kandahar that day looking for footage to use in a BBC
Newsnight
programme. It remains one of the very few pieces of footage of Omar in existence, and the programme that resulted was an award-winning one. Jouvenal was 150 yards away in the back of a Toyota van that had been brought to an unscripted halt by the dense crowd around the shrine. The driver, his fixer and his Taliban minder were sitting in the front. Photographing Omar was strictly forbidden, even then, but with all eyes fixed ahead Jouvenal was able to shoot the scene through the van window, peering surreptitiously through the viewfinder set at a right-angle to the camera on his lap. Omar did not put the cloak on but held it up gingerly, and for no more than a minute or so – which was only sensible considering the garment’s great antiquity. It was quite a windy day, according to Jouvenal, who couldn’t help wondering how different history might have been if the cloak had disintegrated in Omar’s hands. He had one other wicked thought: the chanting and the turban-throwing seemed to him to amount to idolatry, a sin in Islam that the Taliban were later notoriously keen to eradicate from Afghan society.
    Omar’s rooftop theatrics achieved their goal. Nine months earlier, in November 1995, the Taliban’s first assault on Kabul had been repulsed despite the supporting fire of some 400 tanks. This was the first significant setback Omar’s troops had suffered on the battlefield, and the Kandahar gathering provided just the morale boost his troops now needed. The spring and summer of 1996 saw some dazzling military successes in eastern and western Afghanistan. The keys to the Taliban’s early success in Kandahar had been surprise and speed: old guerrilla skills learned in mujahideen times but abandoned by many commanders as thecountry sank into civil war, and static trench warfare around the urban strongholds became the norm. Replicating their tactics in the south, the Taliban now developed a version of Blitzkrieg, with lightly armed fighters travelling in fast fleets of Toyota Hi-Lux trucks. And when this didn’t work they used bribery, usually to equally good effect.
    The Taliban soon renewed their attack on the capital, this time with barrages of rockets. In June, President Rabbani formed a hasty alliance with his main political rival, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who was appointed Prime Minister for a second time. In return, thousands of Hekmatyar’s Hizb-i-Islami troops were brought in to stiffen the defence. They were experienced and well-equipped fighters who, it was assumed, were itching to avenge previous humiliations at the hands of the Taliban back in Spin Boldak and elsewhere. In the American Club, therefore, there were some who predicted that Hizb-i-Islami would prove too great an obstacle for the zealots from the south, and that the assault on the capital would fail once again.
    Pakistan’s role in the war to their west was obscure. It certainly wasn’t a public election issue on the campaign trail in Islamabad and Lahore, where the talk