Kabul - In Afghanistan, Kandahar sits as a remote desert town, home of Osama bin Laden, a war room for the Taliban and now a prime target for US reprisals following the destruction wreaked in New York and Washington. With an ethnic Pashtun population of about 200 000 people, it also serves as a vital link with the Taliban's chief supporter Pakistan and an important trade route with the subcontinent, Middle East and Central Asia.
And as Afghanistan's most celebrated "guest", Saudi dissident and reported millionaire bin Laden lives there as a close confidante of the Taliban chief, Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Omar and bin Laden both own houses in Kandahar - two-story concrete villas - towards the western end, on the city's only tarmacked road which stretches about two kilometres (about a mile) across town.
Rumours about their friendship abound. They travel freely around town, are partial to evening walks and drive Toyota pick-up trucks. Security is tight, but unlike Kabul, not overwhelming.
Nestled within a mountaineous buffer near the border with Pakistan, the city is two-day drive south of here and a safe distance from the bloody fighting which has dominated life in Kabul for more than a decade.
But Kandahar is dirt-poor. It was never a part of the fabled Silk Road riches which traversed this country for 1 000 years. Its buildings are shabby and crowded.
On August 24 1999, a massive truck bomb was detonated in an assassination attempt on Omar outside his house. Timed to coincide with an evening stroll, it warped the foundations of buildings at the extreme east and west ends of town.
The city and region is also bereft of natural resources. Gem stones, copper, oil, gas and arable land are all located hundreds of kilometres away in the north and central provinces.
"Kandahar is unique," one Western analyst told AFP. "It needs the control of the entire country to survive and it needs outside support, whether it's from bin Laden or Pakistan to achieve this."
It has two nearby airports which are heavily mined, and hold radar-guided surface to air defence capabilities.
In late 1999, the closest airport witnessed dramatic events when Islamic militants hijacked an Air India passenger jet in Nepal and flew to Kandahar where the Taliban acted as mediators. The militants escaped.
A second airport, closer to the border, has been touted as bin Laden's primary base from where he travels in a fleet of helicopters with Egyptian and Arab bodyguards to three other airstrips around the country.
Outside bases include Sherbaghan in the west, Ghazni in central Afghanistan and Hadda Farm outside of Jalalabad in the country's east.
More recently, bin Laden has been reportedly sighted in Omar's offices in Kandahar and provinces north of the capital Kabul, where a series of battles has been fought in recent weeks along the frontlines.
Kabul is traditionally Afghanistan's ethnic melting pot mixing Pashtuns from the south with Tajiks, Turks, and Hazaras from the northern and central provinces.
Increasing numbers of suspected Arab mercenaries have also been sighted around the capital in recent months, the raw recruits to the Taliban and bin Laden's radical vision of jihad, or holy war.
Pashtuns - the largest minority - have virtually always ruled amid an Afghan maxim of whoever controls Kabul controls Afghanistan.
The Taliban won that control in 1996 after ousting mostly Tajik forces loyal to opposition leader Ahmad Shah Masood, who was subjected to alleged bin Laden assassination attempt earlier this week.
Although Omar has consistently said the civil war is a jihad or Islamic holy war, others claim the conflict has more to do with Kandahar's location, economic and ethnic factors. -AFP
