The rout of the Taliban has produced apprehension in countries whose citizens either joined fundamentalist armed forces or settled in Afghanistan.
Following the discovery of the bodies of up to 600 people at Mazar-e-Sharif there is concern about summary execution of prisoners.
Pakistan is determined to avoid a repetition of this scenario at the town of Kunduz, now besieged by anti-Taliban forces. Vengeful Afghan Northern Alliance troops are thought to have vented their rage on Pakistanis in particular, because Islamabad created the Taliban and played a major role in its rise to power.
Yesterday the British Foreign Secretary, Mr Jack Straw, and the Pakistani Foreign Minister, Mr Abdul Sattar, urged the Afghans to arrange a peaceful surrender of Kunduz in order to avert another bloodbath.
Other Arab and Muslim governments and communities round the globe fear for the lives of their citizens serving with the Taliban. Arab, Turkish, Chechen, Tajik, Uzbek and other non-Afghan fighters are numbered in the thousands. In addition to these volunteers, there are at least 500 seasoned fighters in the elite Arab brigade attached to al-Qaeda, blamed for the September attacks in the US.
The US Defence Secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, said his country is "not taking prisoners", and the UN, which has no military presence on the ground, is not equipped to deal with captives. Therefore, it is up to the Northern Alliance and other anti-Taliban forces to deal with foreign prisoners.
Before September 11th, radical Islamists, including civilians and relatives, faced death or imprisonment in their countries of origin.
Since then the US anti-terror campaign has deprived them of the few safe havens to which they could emigrate, such as Somalia, the Kurdish area of northern Iraq and Saudi Arabia - and now Afghanistan.
