ChicSunTimes

Taliban, opposition slug it out at key city

November 9, 2001

BY STEVEN GUTKIN

JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan--U.S. jets struck Taliban targets across northern Afghanistan on Thursday, and fierce fighting was reported around the Taliban-held city of Mazar-e-Sharif, cornerstone of the Islamic militia's control of the north.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition confirmed a ''gunfight'' was raging south of Mazar-e-Sharif, although he refused to give details. Taliban and opposition spokesmen described intense fighting, with front lines moving back and forth around a key ridge south of the city.

Opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said the Northern Alliance was so confident of victory that commanders have met to discuss how to storm Mazar-e-Sharif without destroying the city.

''We are trying to take the city with the least destruction possible,'' Nadeem said in a satellite telephone interview. ''The Taliban are scattered and we hope that they will leave Mazar-e-Sharif. We will take Mazar-e-Sharif, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a few days.''

Elsewhere, U.S. jets and B-52 bombers repeatedly hit Taliban targets along the front line about 30 miles north of the capital, Kabul, and around Kandahar, the southern city that is the headquarters of the Islamic militia.

Huge plumes of smoke billowed from Taliban positions, which did not fire anti-aircraft guns as they have on past bombing runs over the capital. It was unclear whether the guns had been knocked out or whether the Taliban were just saving ammunition.

Bismillah Khan, an opposition commander, said U.S. bombing overnight near Kabul had been ''very effective,'' and two Taliban tanks and an anti-aircraft position were destroyed.

Most front-line Taliban installations have been destroyed and Taliban troops were moving around to evade U.S. bombs, Khan said.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that U.S. warplanes also conducted 27 bombing raids in western Herat province.

In other developments:

*The Afghan Islamic Press reported that the Taliban have arrested 16 Afghans on suspicion of spying for the United States. An unidentified Taliban intelligence official told the agency the suspects included Abdul Manaf, a former Afghan army colonel. The report could not be independently confirmed.

*Pakistan ordered the Taliban to close their consulate in Karachi after allegations that diplomats there were organizing protests and attacks on U.S. installations.

More than a month into the air campaign, the focus of U.S. attacks has shifted to the north, especially around Mazar-e-Sharif, which the Taliban overran in 1998. After intensive U.S. bombing, opposition forces have reached within about 10 miles of the city but appeared to have slowed down around a ridge that runs east-to-west south of Mazar-e-Sharif.

In Washington, Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of the Afghanistan operation, told reporters ''there is a gunfight that is going on in the vicinity of Mazar-e-Sharif'' but said it's ''a bit too early to characterize this'' as a success.

There was no independent information on casualties. But in Pakistan, a Kashmir separatist group, the Harkat-e-Jehad-e-Islami, said 85 of its fighters were killed in recent U.S. airstrikes around Mazar-e-Sharif. The group maintains close contacts with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

Capturing the city would open a land bridge to Uzbekistan, 35 miles to the north, enabling the anti-Taliban forces to receive tanks, artillery, armored personnel carriers and other equipment which cannot be flown in because of poor airstrips in areas they control.

-- Anonymous, November 09, 2001