The five warlords leading the fight to topple the Taliban

General Mohamed Qasim Fahim

An ethnic Tajik, he took over as the military leader of the Northern Alliance after the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood by suicide bombers on 9 September. General Fahim, previously the alliance's intelligence chief, lacks the charisma of Masood. He commands the largest force of the Northern Alliance, with 10,000 troops based in the Panjshir valley north of Kabul.

General Abdul Rashid Dostum

The general is a whisky-swilling veteran who held sway in Soviet times, an ethnic Uzbek warlord whose militia ruled northern Afghan-istan until the Taliban forced him out of his stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998.

Although his power base derived from the ethnic Uzbeks, General Dostum switched sides a dizzying number of times and had variously joined the Soviet-backed government of Najibullah, the mujahedeen government of Burhannudin Rabbani and the Islamist forces of Gulbaheddin Hekmatyar.

He returned to Afghanistan from Turkey earlier this year to spearhead the recapture of Mazar after burying the hatchet with his former rival Ahmad Shah Masood to fight the Taliban.

Burhannudin Rabbani

Rabbani is still recognised outside Afghanistan as the Afghan President, although until last week the Northern Alliance forces held only 10 percent of the country.

Mr Rabbani has led the Jamiat-i-Islami (Islamic Society) since 1971, and returned from exile to become President of the mujahedeen government in 1992, before being forced out of the capital by the Taliban in 1996.

Ismail Khan

He is a legendary Iranian-backed leader, whose forces yesterday claimed to have recaptured the western city of Herat. The ethnic Tajik escaped a Taliban jail in 1998 after a year in prison to organise resistance from Iran before moving back into the western provinces earlier this year when he joined up with other Northern Alliance forces.

The warlord ruled Herat from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992 until the city fell to the Taliban in 1995. He came to prominence in 1979 during the fight against communist rule, after he switched allegiance from the Soviet army.

Mohamed Ustad Atta

The ethnic Tajik commander Mohamed Ustad Atta set aside his bitter rivalry with the Uzbek militia leader General Dostum to join forces against the Taliban to recapture Mazar-I-Sharif. But some reports say their rivalry resurfaced to prevent the earlier capture of the city, after a poorly co-ordinated attack forced Atta's men to withdraw after almost reaching the centre.

During the Soviet occupation, the local Mazar militia leader Atta fought against the Soviet forces, and General Dostum fought for them.

Mohamed Mohaqeq

Mohaqeq is an ethnic Hazara leader who heads the third faction that teamed up to recapture Mazar-i-Sharif.

The Hazaras, who are Shia Muslims, are the bitter foes of the Taliban after monstrous bloodletting when the city changed hands in the late Nineties. When the Sunni Muslim Taliban seized Mazar in 1997, hundreds of Taliban soldiers were massacred by the Northern Alliance after being trapped in the city's unfamiliar alleyways.

The Alliance recaptured the city after a week. But the Taliban retook it in 1998 and massacred the minority Hazaras.