Tuesday October 23, 8:46 AM

Taliban officers defect in droves: British press

Taliban officers defected in their droves after US-led bombing annihilated a key airport on the first day of their military campaign, a British newspaper reported quoting a Taliban defector.

A former senior Taliban air officer told the Guardian newspaper that he fled Afghanistan with 10 military technicians hours after US warplanes obliterated Kandahar airport on the first night of the air strikes.

"The Taliban have asked me and the others to return but we will not. We don't want to die. You cannot fight against the American's technology, it is not possible. Educated military men know that," the former officer told the paper.

His admission is totally at odds with the defiant statements of the Taliban leadership.

The 38-year-old defector, using the pseudonym Said Sanan, went on to say that Taliban defences had been ravaged by the military strikes.

Both radar systems at Kabul airport had been destroyed and the two MiG 21s destroyed at Kandahar airport were real, not dummies as claimed, according to the Guardian's informant.

The planes had been left on the runway so the pilots could scramble quickly, but the Americans vaporised the MiGs before the crew could reach the cockpits, Sanan told the paper.

"It was stupid, since our pilots are not trained to fly at night anyway," he added.

However the defector also had some worrying news for the US-led anti-terrorism coalition: The pilots had survived and at least five SU-22 bombers remain hidden and intact at a village which Sanan would not identify.

He also claimed that Kandahar's truck-based radar system remained intact and that Osama bin Laden, prime suspect for the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, may have had warning of the strikes.

After the initial attacks, Sanan and 10 colleagues fled east to Pakistan while others headed for Iran.

"We are all professionally trained technicians and realised we could not compete with the Americans' air power. We did not tell our commanders, we just left," he said.

However, not all fled when they realised that the odds were against them.

Those who stayed tended to be younger, uneducated and fanatical, Sanan said.

"They will fight to the end, no doubt. They know only what their leaders tell," he added.

The defector also backed up previous Taliban claims that civilians have been hit by the US-led strikes.

"Civilians have been very badly hit and in the next few weeks will suffer more than anyone. But around Kandahar, the Taliban have lost a lot of men, hundreds," he said.

-- Anonymous, October 23, 2001