US slow to confirm identity of American fighting as Taliban

It's a long way from suburban California to a hospital bed in Mazar-i-Sharif, and an even longer road from John Philip Walker Lindh (20), of Fairfax, California, to Abdul Hamid, Taliban fighter now prisoner of US special forces.

The discovery among the 86 wounded survivors of the Qalai Janghi fort uprising of the palefaced young man with impeccable English, a middle class kid known to his school friends as Walker and his comrades as Abdul, has added a new dimension to this most unusual war.

The revolt, which began November 25th, was put down after three days of bloody fighting; the men straggled out of the basement on Saturday after Northern Alliance fighters filled it with water to force them out.

Lindh, the son of divorced parents, who has bullet and grenade wounds, was brought up in the Washington suburbs of Maryland, and took his first steps on his improbable journey when he converted at the age of 16 from Catholicism to Islam.

At 18 he travelled to Sana in Yemen to learn Arabic and from there moved to Pakistan to attend a madrassah Islamic school in the Northwest Province village of Bannu near the Afghan border. It was there, he told CNN, he started to read Taliban literature and "my heart became attached to them". He volunteered to fight and they sent him to join the foreign troops that were aligned with al Qaeda.

His mother, Ms Marilyn Walker, told Newsweek her son was "sweet, shy kid" who had gone to Pakistan with an Islamic humanitarian group to help the poor. She said the reports of his capture were the first news she had received of her son's whereabouts since he left the madrassah seven months ago.

"If he got involved in the Taliban, he must have been brainwashed," said Ms Walker, a home health care worker. "He was isolated. He didn't know a soul in Pakistan. When you're young and impressionable, it's easy to be led."

US officials were initially not confirming that he is a US national. One told the Washington Post they "have a lot of checking to do here before we know just what we have. He's speaking perfectly clear English - and underneath the beard and the dirt, he looks like your basic Caucasian".

The Northern Alliance have told US officials that two more Americans were among their captives near Mazar-e- Sharif, a defence official said yesterday. Us officials have not been able to meet with the two or independently confirm the report.