Race to Kunduz: grab those pickup trucks and tanks!

Getting their forces in first to secure the vehicles and heavy weapons had been the priority for northeast commanders in whose territory Kunduz lay, knowing rival opposition warlord Rashid Dostum was chomping at the bit.

"Because there must be no problems in the future, we must divide it well among the groups," Taj Mohammed, the top front-line commander under alliance Gen. Daoud Khan, said as tanks and infantry waited to head into the city from the east.

Daoud said Kunduz fell to anti-Taliban fighters Sunday after a two-week siege.

"I'll be very happy when I can defeat international terrorists, and I hope, too, that I can take a car of the international terrorists," said Maraj Adin, an eager 16-year-old fighter under Daoud. A Kalashnikov assault rifle slung over his shoulder and coveted trademarks rolled off his lips — "Datsun. Toyota."

In the end, it was Dostum — who already won glory for capturing Mazar-e-Sharif two weeks ago, bringing on the collapse of the Taliban — who had some of the first fighters reported to enter Kunduz.

Daoud, who hours earlier had vowed Dostum "will never" enter Kunduz, was left insisting there was no such thing as competition within the alliance.

"There is no difference between a soldier of Dostum and a soldier of mine," Daoud declared, moving his forces out minutes after getting word over his radio and satellite phone that Dostum's faction already was in the city.

"I'm sure there will be no fighting in our future," the general said, when reporters pressed him over whether Sunday's fits-and-starts over first entry to Kunduz boded more trouble among the factions in the northern alliance.

The commanders paused outside Kunduz on Sunday to discuss among themselves the move into the city and the securing of "equipment," Daoud said.

Alliance commanders have often been some of their own worst enemies, giving free rein to infighting that brought down their government when it held power in the 1990s.

Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, has been an epic warrior of infighting.

In 1994, Dostum started a battle to oust his nominal ally, Burhanuddin Rabbani, as president. The civil war that followed killed thousands, laid waste to Kabul, and opened the door to the Taliban takeover two years later.

Daoud, for his part, backs Rabbani, now the titular head of the northern alliance.

Who, if anyone, can claim real control of the alliance is a matter yet to be worked out — and one of the stakes in the battle against the Taliban. Cars — less gloriously — have been another.

Last week, Daoud's own men fought among themselves over the vehicles of newly defected Taliban fighters. At one point, the bickerers fired live rounds to try to scare their comrades and fellow car-contenders away from the booty.

In a land where transport for many except those in the military is still by donkey and foot, cars and trucks have helped bind fighters to the struggle.

"We heard Kunduz had fallen, so we can get some cars," one man cried out Saturday. He was among a group of men jammed into the bed of a pickup truck that had screeched up to the front lines, horn beeping.

As long as the war is fought, though, alliance fighters have a loftier goal that ties them together more strongly — getting rid of the foreign Taliban allies, hated as invaders of Afghanistan.

"We just want the foreigners out," said Maraj Adin, the 16-year-old, adding that in the end it made no difference to him whether Dostum got Kunduz, and its wheels. "We want peace, not cars."