As many as ten thousand fighters holed up in Kandahar with their weapons. For many, it was not an escape but a return home—back to the refugee camps in Balochistan where they had been brought up and where their families still lived; back to the madrassas where they had once studied; back to the hospitality of the mosques where they had once prayed. For those with no families to receive them, militants from Pakistani extremist groups and the Jamiat-e-Ulema in Pakistan—like benevolent charity workers—welcomed them at the border with blankets, fresh clothes, and envelopes full of money. ISI officials, standing with the Frontier Constabulary guards and customs officials at Chaman, the border crossing into Balochistan province, waved them in. Musharraf was not about to discourage or arrest these Taliban fighters who had been nurtured for two decades by the military. For Pakistan they still represented the future of Afghanistan, and they had to be hidden away until their time came. Initially the arriving Taliban were a demoralized lot.
