U.S.

On The Scene: The United Front

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 3, 2001 / 5:18 PM EDT / CBS

In his button-down shirt and pressed khakis, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah looks like any common commuter; that is, if common includes a route over hotly contested mountains in an armed helicopter.

Dr. Abdullah is the public face of the anti-Taliban United Front, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Axelrod.

"Like people from another planet, they are not of this age, of this world," says Abdullah. "Taliban. You are talking about totally different creatures."

Dr. Abdullah lives in the Panjshir Valley, a sliver of villages where you're as likely to see men carrying bags of badly needed bullets as baking stacks of bread. After being ignored for years, money is pouring into the United Front from Russia, Iran, and Dr. Abdullah now confirms, the United States.

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But it's not just American money they want, it's U.S. firepower - a joint effort Abdullah says would benefit the U.S. just as much.

Can the U.S. be successful in Afghanistan without the United Front? Abdullah says, "No, no way."

As the wreckage of a Soviet tank testifies, the Panjsher Valley has long been a feared military stronghold in Afghanistan. Nine times the Soviets tried to take the valley; nine times they failed. Tucked in between some of Afghanistan's tallest and most rugged mountains, this could be an ideal place for a U.S. force to base.

In the village of Gohlbar, a frontline town that has changed hands several times in the last few years, nut merchant Jalal Hadim says Americans would be welcome.

"If the American soldiers are coming here and they help with the United Front it will make us happy," Hadim says through a translator.

On a mountaintop overlooking the valley is something else that links the United States and the United Front: the grave of Shah Masood, the revered military commander assassinatd two days before the attacks on America by terrorists believed to be part of Osama bin Laden's network

"He was fighting against the biggest enemy of the United States," says Abdullah.

While the U.S. has not said it will ever endorse his vision, Dr. Abdullah would like to see the United Front and the U.S. joined by more then just grief.