<P> Massoud and Dostum, former arch - enemies, created a United Front against the Taliban, commonly known as the Northern Alliance . In addition to Massoud's Tajik force and Dostum's Uzbeks, the United Front included Hazara factions and Pashtun forces under the leadership of commanders such as Abdul Haq and Haji Abdul Qadir . Abdul Haq also gathered a limited number of defecting Pashtun Taliban . Both agreed to work together with the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah . International officials who met with representatives of the new alliance, which the journalist Steve Coll referred to as the "grand Pashtun - Tajik alliance", said, "It's crazy that you have this today...Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara...They were all ready to buy in to the process...to work under the king's banner for an ethnically balanced Afghanistan ." The Northern Alliance received varying degrees of support from Russia, Iran, Tajikistan and India . The Taliban captured Mazar - i - Sharif in 1998 and drove Dostum into exile . </P> <P> The conflict was brutal . According to the United Nations (UN), the Taliban, while trying to consolidate control over northern and western Afghanistan, committed systematic massacres against civilians . UN officials stated that there had been "15 massacres" between 1996 and 2001 . The Taliban especially targeted the Shia Hazaras . In retaliation for the execution of 3,000 Taliban prisoners by Uzbek general Abdul Malik Pahlawan in 1997, the Taliban executed about 4,000 civilians after taking Mazar - i - Sharif in 1998 . </P> <P> Bin Laden's 055 Brigade was responsible for mass killings of Afghan civilians . The report by the United Nations quotes eyewitnesses in many villages describing "Arab fighters carrying long knives used for slitting throats and skinning people". </P> <P> By 2001, the Taliban controlled as much as 90% of Afghanistan, with the Northern Alliance confined to the country's northeast corner . Fighting alongside Taliban forces were some 28,000--30,000 Pakistanis (usually also Pashtun) and 2,000--3,000 Al - Qaeda militants . Many of the Pakistanis were recruited from madrassas . A 1998 document by the U.S. State Department confirmed that "20--40 percent of (regular) Taliban soldiers are Pakistani ." The document said that many of the parents of those Pakistani nationals "know nothing regarding their child's military involvement with the Taliban until their bodies are brought back to Pakistan". According to the U.S. State Department report and reports by Human Rights Watch, other Pakistani nationals fighting in Afghanistan were regular soldiers, especially from the Frontier Corps, but also from the Pakistani Army providing direct combat support . </P>

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