Former Taliban Fighters Brave a New Battlefield

Today, after giving up guns for politics, the former Taliban commander is leading his province's race for a seat in parliament, where he hopes his debating skills will prove as sharp as his aim.

"In the past, we finished off our enemies with rockets," said the mullah, sitting cross-legged on the floor of his spartan office here. Now, he added, "we will get rid of them with reason and concentration."

Much like his country's struggle to end more than 26 years of war, Rocketi's success as a democrat may depend on whether old foes agree that talking is better than killing. The mullah says he has received repeated threats from both the Taliban and supporters of the Northern Alliance, which helped U.S. forces remove the extremist regime in 2001.

With U.S. support, President Hamid Karzai has offered amnesty to most Taliban members, and encouraged them to help build a democracy. Rocketi was one of at least eight prominent Taliban leaders who took the offer and ran for parliament. Most of the rest appear headed for defeat at polls in strongholds they lost on the battlefield four years ago.

With about half the ballots from the Sept. 18 elections counted and certified, Rocketi is the front-runner for one of three seats in the 249-seat Wolesi Jirga, or House of the People, allocated to southern Zabol province.

Voters have delivered the most dramatic defeat to former Taliban Foreign Minister Wakil Ahmed Mutawakel, who was regarded as a moderate by Western governments. He is running 31st, with less than 1% of the vote, for Kandahar province's 11 seats. Maulvi Qalamuddin, who once led the notorious Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, and Mullah Abdul Samad Khaksar, former deputy interior minister in the Taliban regime, are also headed for defeat.

In Wardak province, Haji Musa Hotak, a former Taliban battalion commander in the central region of the province, is battling for fourth place, but only the top three male candidates will go to parliament. As in other provinces, two of Wardak's five seats are reserved for women.

Younis Qanooni, a former Northern Alliance leader who is running second among the candidates for Kabul's 33 seats, says he's willing to forgive and forget Rocketi's past.