ABCNews.com - Inside the Northern Alliance

> Giving Up the Gun in Afghanistan Afghans Are Ready to Replace Bullets With the Ballot — But Are the Warlords? By LEELA JACINTO Oct. 6, 2004 Font Size At 17, he signed on to a fighter's life, wielding his AK-47 on a dangerous front line, where a few seconds could make the difference between life and death. At 23, he has just turned his back on an adrenalin-packed life and is ready to start again — as a benign tailor. Six years after he battled Taliban fighters north of the Afghan capital of Kabul, Muhibullah handed over his prized assault rifle last month, swapping his once-exalted status as a mujahid, or holy warrior, for the more banal life of a tailor. Top International stories Related Topics An ethnic Tajik who only goes by one name, Muhibullah joined the Northern Alliance resistance in 1998, two years after the Taliban captured his native Kabul. A loose alliance of political parties and ethnic groups — predominantly Tajik — who fought the Taliban, the Northern Alliance was at the forefront of the 2001 U.S. military campaign to oust the hard-line Islamist regime. But that was a time of war, when fighters loyal to legendary resistance leader Ahmed Shah Masood desperately tried to stem the Taliban onslaught north of Kabul. Today, the Central Asian nation is officially in a post-conflict stage of its troubled history, with millions of Afgha...