JALALABAD - Wrapped in a blanket with only his face showing, Sana Ullah sits on the ground with three fellow Pakistanis who had chosen to fight alongside Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic militia.

They are now prisoners of the mujahedin factions that control the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad. Sana Ullah and his friends were arrested before dawn on Saturday.

The mujahedin took them to a tiny shack within the perimeter of the city airport, which American aircraft had bombed last week.

"We were hoping to return to Pakistan, through the tribal areas," Sana Ullah said in Urdu.

The prisoner, who had not been tied up, seemed more lost than scared in the presence of his captors.

Sana Ullah hails from Punjab, on the eastern flank of Pakistan, and had no way of following the language spoken by his Afghan captors.

Jalalabad was freed from Taliban control not by the Northern Alliance that currently controls Kabul but by local warlords who are currently engaged in a heated debate over sharing power in the area.

Sana Ullah, like thousands of other Pakistanis, had decided to fight alongside the Islamic militia forces in Afghanistan in response to the anti-US jihad (holy war) call by the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

"I set out a week ago to fight against the Americans in the Lowgar province, south of Kabul," he said, without explaining how he had planned to cover the distance from his home in such a short time.

"Earlier I used to run a stall in a village in Punjab," said the vendor who looked at least 10 years older than his stated age of 17.

"If I appear older, it is because I'm poor and have to work very hard," he said. Sana Ullah said he had witnessed bombing raids, but was mum on the details of his capture and any fighting he had been caught up in.

He seemed aware that while the Northern Alliance were willing to accept defections from Afghans who had fought alongside the Taliban, they would be less generous in handling cases of foreigners who wanted to follow suit.

"They will perhaps kill me," Sana Ullah said lowering his voice. "Now I just want to go back to my family.

They have nobody to look after them." His three comrades nodded in agreement but were reluctant to speak.

Another group of Pakistani prisoners that had been arrested while trying to return home was sent to Kunar province on Saturday.

"They have been sent to a secure area, to a prison. We'll decide what to do later," a local mujahedin leader said. Nampa-Sapa-AFP