You're probably right. There's no reason to believe the Northern Alliance is any better than the Taliban. But they could hardly be worse. CNN ran a doc last night on life under the Taliban. It looked fairly recent. The Taliban just seem as miserable and repressive as one could imagine. Footage of them shooting women in a soccer field. Question to Taliban spokesman: 'International aid built that stadium for football. But it's being used for executions.' Response: 'If the world community would build us a separate place for executions, we wouldn't have to use the stadium for both.' Even allowing for a slanted report, that's a chilling answer to capture on film.

I wonder how much of the current wave of Taliban information is spontaneously discovered or memetic, or whether there is still a propaganda machine in place. I don't doubt that the Taliban is a nasty piece of work, but the Northern Alliance isn't exactly the welcome wagon.

I'm not sure how reliable a source the Telegraph is, but note that this is a completely uncorroborated report. Not that I don't believe it.