The Taliban have shot themselves in the foot by committing an atrocity that has shaken even their own supporters so what do they do? Say: "It wasn't us, it was the evil American mercenaries". It's the oldest propaganda trick in the book.

PM: The Taliban were not an offshoot of the Northern Alliance, they were created in the religious schools on the Pakistan border by the Pakistani intelligence agency. The Northern Alliance was composed of the Tajik and Uzbek warlords in the north and was largely in opposition to the Pashtun southerners and completely opposed to the fundamentalist Pashtuns in the Taliban.