Telegraph

Bounty hunters lured by $25m head for mountains By Philip Smucker in the Khyber Pass (Filed: 15/11/2001)

AFGHAN bounty hunters are heading into the country's mountain ranges to look for Osama bin Laden and his senior lieutenants in the hope of winning large American rewards.

No sooner had the city of Jalalabad fallen yesterday than groups were being formed by Afghans who had heard of the $25 million (£17.8 million) being offered for the capture of the Saudi and his Arab followers. They are widely seen as foreign interlopers in Afghanistan, a country where the average wage is less than £1 a day.

"Groups of citizens have decided to go up into the mountains and finish the business of bringing these people to justice,"said Pir Sayed Ishaq Gailani, a prominent Pathan royalist from Jalalabad, currently living in Pakistan.

Yesterday's fall of Jalalabad, the main base for bin Laden and his Arab foreign legion in Afghanistan, has created widespread disorder in the south of the country. Residents said that Arabs and Pakistanis who had occupied the city's hotels and nearby training camps had begun to flee the city, covering their withdrawal with bursts of machinegun fire.

But many roads were blocked for the fleeing fighters by Afghan warlords who have risen against the Taliban and its allies. Tribal elders took control of several areas, including the town of Gardez in Paktia province, about 60 miles south of Jalalabad.

The city itself is now said to be under the control of Maulvi Yunus Khalis, an ageing Pathan warlord formerly allied to the Taliban, who seized control of the city at noon yesterday after his forces fought off an attack from another would-be governor.

The mayhem inside Afghanistan was mirrored at the Pakistani end of the Khyber Pass yesterday as a mad rush of former anti-Soviet freedom fighters seeking to join the fight was beaten back by Pakistani border police.

The men, fiercely opposed to the Taliban although they are members of the same Pathan tribe, are clamouring to end their exile in Pakistan.

Mohammad Farouq, a young man with a woollen beret, screamed at Pakistani border guards: "Let me by! Let me by! This is my country and I want to help expel the Arabs!"

Mr Farouq explained that he was part of a peace delegation. He said: "Some of our men are already inside. They've already been given weapons and cars by Maulvi Yunus Khalis."

Despite Pakistani attempts to seal the border, some anti-Taliban exiles have already reached the Jalalabad area. Commanders loyal to Haji Zama Ghamsherik, a local warlord, reached the city on foot yesterday from the Khyber Pass and were handed arms that had been seized when citizens raided a Taliban weapons depot, said witnesses.

Reports say Jalalabad is in a state of near chaos. Mohammad Haroun, 47, a lorry driver, said that the ordinary Taliban and their Arab allies were now falling out.

"I saw an Arab point his gun at two Talibs and, when they refused to surrender, he shot them point blank, jumped in their car with his two children and drove off."

The lorry driver said he had seen dozens of Arab fighters slinking out of Jalalabad, possibly towards Pakistan, as the city changed hands. Some Arabs had clipped their own beards in their hotel rooms and discarded army fatigues.

Followers of Yunus Khalis, who surrendered the city five years ago to the Taliban, also took control of the Afghan border side of the Khyber Pass. But dozens of other border crossings into Pakistan are controlled by pro-Taliban Pakistani tribesmen.

Meanwhile, American war planes kept up the pressure yesterday with more air raids near Jalalabad, witnesses said. A night earlier, American aircraft bombed the airport and military installations on six different occasions.

-- Anonymous, November 14, 2001