Talks collapse, rebels attack Kunduz U.S. planes back new offensive by opposition

A Northern Alliance soldier, left, takes away a rocket launcher from a Taliban soldier who surrendered Thursday on the front line near Kunduz.

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES

Nov. 23 — Supported by U.S. airstrikes on Taliban front-line positions, troops of the main opposition Northern Alliance launched an assault Thursday on the besieged northern city of Kunduz. The offensive, which began after negotiations for a Taliban surrender foundered, appeared to ensure that the Taliban’s last stand in northern Afghanistan would be a bloody one.

THE NORTHERN ALLIANCE said its forces were closing in on Kunduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold in the north, and would swiftly capture the city, where they were encircling thousands of Taliban fighters, joined by militant Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens allied with al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network.

The alliance said it had no option but to storm the city after days of negotiations for a peaceful surrender fell apart. Commanders on both sides said native Afghan members of the Taliban in Kunduz were willing to surrender, but the foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden, expecting no mercy, were fighting to the death. Some were reported this week to have executed Afghan colleagues who wanted to give up.

“We have tried to settle the issue of Kunduz through negotiation, but we have been forced to choose a military solution,” alliance Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni told Reuters in an interview in Kabul. “At the moment, our forces are advancing. We hope by tomorrow we will have secured Kunduz.”

If Kunduz falls, the Taliban would be left with control only of its homeland around Kandahar in the south, setting up a final fight against the U.S.-backed forces.

ACCORD ON FOREIGN SOLDIERS

The Arabic-language al-Jazeera news agency reported Friday morning that opposition tanks and artillery began rolling into the city after a series of advance airstrikes by U.S. warplanes. The British Broadcasting Corp. reported that Taliban troops in surrounding hills responded with mortar rounds but that their fire was drowned out by the U.S. bombers.

The offensive capped a day of confusion in which a surrender agreement was announced even as heavy fighting continued. Atta Mohammed, an alliance commander at Kunduz, said by satellite telephone from the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, west of Kunduz, that the Taliban had agreed to hand over the foreign fighters, but Mullah Khan, another top commander, told NBC News that negotiations were never finalized.

Khan said some Taliban forces had managed to leave Kunduz even though though the foreign mercenaries loyal to bin Laden were trying to force them to continue their battle against the Northern Alliance.

More than 300 Taliban fighters defected Wednesday night, bringing tanks and weapons with them, Khan said. “They were given safe passage to their home provinces in Afghanistan,” he said.

Khan, who commanded the Kabul front line in the alliance’s five-year effort to win back territory from the Taliban, said a Taliban request to provide passage to the foreign fighters to Kandahar or to neighboring Pakistan was “unacceptable” to the Northern Alliance.

U.S. STRIKES CONTINUE The alliance reported that U.S. B-52 bombers continued to strike Taliban and al-Qaida positions in Kunduz in support of the opposition offensive, while witnesses and Western journalists reported further U.S. airstrikes across the country.

MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield reported at least three explosions near Jalalabad in the east, where she was on assignment. Intelligence sources in Pakistan told NBC that random airstrikes were taking place happening across the country as “targets of opportunity” emerged — primarily reports of Arabs and of al-Qaida enclaves, particularly in Jalalabad’s province, Nangarhar.

NBC News’ Jim Maceda reported that strikes also continued in Kandahar, where U.S. intelligence sources said they believed bin Laden or his chief operatives could be in hiding, and that a new ground skirmish broke out in Maidan Shar, 20 miles from Kabul, the capital.

The BBC reported that it appeared that a Taliban commander in Maidan Shar had double-crossed the Northern Alliance after accepting a $200,000 payment and was trying to mount a counterattack with 600 to 700 local Taliban fighters and as many as 400 foreign al-Qaida allies.

BODIES FOUND IN MAZAR

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Thursday that 400 to 600 bodies had been found in Mazar-e-Sharif after its capture by the Northern Alliance. Red Cross spokeswoman Macarena Aguilar said it was not known whether the dead had been executed or were killed in the fighting that preceded the fall of the town Nov. 9.

“I know 400 to 600 bodies have been found and that we have so far buried 300,” Aguilar told Reuters. “I cannot say how they died.” The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, close to Afghanistan’s frontier with Uzbekistan, triggered a whirlwind advance by the Northern Alliance, who have captured much of the country from the Taliban.

U.S. teams are searching and taking samples from sites in Afghanistan where the al-Qaida terrorist network may have been building chemical or biological weapons, a top Pentagon official said Wednesday.

Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said U.S. forces had visited some but not all areas where al-Qaida may have been making such weapons of mass destruction. Results of tests from those sites have not come back yet, Pace said.

In Moscow, NATO Secretary General George Robertson cautioned that the Taliban was not yet defeated.

Robertson was in Moscow to discuss closer ties between NATO and Russia in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States, which the United States has blamed on bin Laden.

“The Taliban is in retreat, but is not yet defeated. But they will be defeated, and al-Qaida and bin Laden will face justice for what they did in New York and elsewhere,” Robertson told reporters after talks with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov. BUSH WARNS OF CAVE WARFARE

Robertson’s cautious words echoed those of President Bush, who spoke Wednesday to Army soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky.

“We’ve made a good start in Afghanistan, yet there is still a lot to be done,” the president said. “There are still terrorists on the loose in Afghanistan, and we will find and destroy their network, piece by piece. The most difficult steps in this mission still lie ahead, where enemies hide in sophisticated cave complexes.”

Bush raised the specter of a bloody, prolonged, Iwo Jima-style campaign: “These hideouts are heavily fortified and defended by fanatics who will fight to the death.

“The enemy hopes they can hide until we tire. But we’re going to prove them wrong. We will never tire. And we will hunt them down,” he said.

A spokesman for the Taliban said Wednesday that the movement planned to defend the southern provinces still under its control, dismissing claims that it was getting ready to surrender Kandahar.

“They have decided to defend the presently controlled areas,” said the spokesman, Syed Tayyad Agha. “We will defend our nation ... and we will not give any chance to anybody to disturb our Islamic rule in Kandahar and other provinces.”

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. Tommy Franks, said Wednesday that he was “pleased where this campaign inside Afghanistan stands,” echoing Pentagon statements that U.S. forces were “tightening the noose” around the Taliban homeland.

But Franks, who was visiting local leaders and U.S. troops in neighboring Uzbekistan, stressed that the war effort was aimed at more than the Taliban’s ouster. The destruction of bin Laden and al-Qaida was the paramount objective, he said, and “we have a great deal of work left to do.”

U.S. military officials have told NBC News that a 1,500-strong Marine expeditionary unit could be sent to southern Afghanistan as soon as this weekend to help track down bin Laden.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001

Answers

The Times, UK

City of blood and betrayal

FROM IAN COBAIN IN THE SEIGE OF KONDUZ

KONDUZ was on the brink of a bloodbath last night, as rival Northern Alliance warlords vied for the city and the Taleban’s besieged forces threatened to turn on each other.

As one Alliance general attacked from the east, another moved in from the west, while inside the last Taleban stronghold in northern Afghanistan foreign fanatics were preparing to kill Taleban defectors.

The split between rival Alliance commanders determined to seize Konduz has undermined hopes of building a broad-based Afghan government, as another apparently straightforward military situation dissolved into back-stabbing ferocity.

One general claimed to have negotiated a surrender of Taleban fighters while another promised only further bloodshed, as both sought to control the city and its stockpile of Taleban weapons.

In an announcement that is said to have triggered street celebrations in the besieged city, the Uzbek General Rashid Dostum claimed to have negotiated a settlement allowing the Islamic militia to lay down arms and surrender.

Less than an hour later, on the opposite side of the city, Tajik General Mohammad Dawood Khan was mobilising his tanks, artillery and thousands of infantry, in an attempt to take it by force.

By last night he appeared to have pushed the Taleban back several miles towards the small town of Khanabad, taking scores of prisoners as they went and accepting the surrender of several hundred deserters who had agreed to switch sides.

It was the first sign of a schism in the fragile, multi-ethnic Alliance, pitting one tribal leader against another. Whichever general wins, the 220,000 inhabitants of Konduz, a city the size of Derby, will be caught in the crossfire. General Dawood’s assault was under way yesterday evening, with his T55s firing shell after shell into the Taleban’s hilltop positions 20 miles east of Konduz, while American B52 bombers soared overhead, dropping 500lb bombs that kicked dust and debris high into the air.

General Dostum’s forces were reported to have entered the western outskirts of the city. The Taleban had appeared to be on the point of surrender, but as the Alliance fractured, the remaining fighters showed little sign of giving up.

“We know there have been talks, and we know the high-ups say it means peace,” Mohammad Shamam said as he struggled across the front line towards the safety of the city of Taloqan in the east, followed by his burka-clad wife and six frowning children, with their worldly possessions on the backs of two donkeys.

“But only a fool would gamble that there will be anything but war.”

As if to echo his cynicism, three Taleban mortar shells screamed over his head and exploded beside the road ahead, sending dozens of refugees scurrying across the rice fields. Two minutes later a fourth shell landed, and then a fifth.

Throughout the day, thousands of General Dawood’s troops moved towards the front, most of them marching dozens of miles on foot, but some making their way on ageing flat-bed lorries and pick-up trucks. Large numbers of T54 and T55 tanks could also be seen travelling west towards the Taleban’s defences, followed by Russian-made armoured fighting vehicles.

Most of the troops were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, but among them were 400 Pashtun fighters who had thrown in their lot with the Alliance and agreed to wage war against the Pashtun-led Taleban.

Closer to the front, hundreds of troops sheltered in rice fields, or rested on the roofs of the mud houses. All around them were the scars not just of the last month’s fighting against the Taleban, but of 22 years of war: rusting Soviet tanks lay along the wayside while the fields and hills were pockmarked by ancient shell craters. Much of the area was mined by the Russians, and more mines were laid during fighting against the Taleban in 1997 and again last year: all along the road, one-legged men and boys hobbled out of their homes in dirt-poor villages to watch the advancing army.

Tracer rounds could be seen arcing across the sky and the deafening roar of laser-guided bombs showed that American jets were continuing to seek Taleban targets.

As the people of Konduz waited to discover their fate, so too did the thousands of foreigners fighting alongside the Taleban, many of them Islamic fundamentalists thought to be loyal to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. The issue of touris khareji, the foreign tourists, has been the major stumbling block during the surrender negotiations although yesterday, in their hunger for the spoils of Konduz, both warlords appeared to have put out of their minds.

There was growing evidence that some foreign Taleban have already slipped the net, with increasing numbers of refugees claiming that Pakistani transport planes have been landing at the city’s airfield, bringing American dollars for the trapped Taleban commanders and evacuating young Pakistani and Punjabi fighters. It was unclear why the United States, which controls the airspace over Afghanistan, would have permitted such flights.

There is also suspicion at General Dawood’s headquarters that General Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, will have quietly extricated many of the fundamentalist fighters from Uzbekistan, the former Soviet republic, to the north.

Up to 2,000 men from Uzbekistan are thought to have been fighting with the Taleban under the leadership of Juma “Jumaboy” Namangani, a former Red Army paratrooper. He died in an American bombing raid four days ago.

General Dostum’s forces chased thousands of Taleban to Konduz after prising them out of the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif two weeks ago.

The general declared that he had secured the city’s surrender after talks with Mullah Dadi Allah, the senior Taleban commander in Konduz, who is reported to be barely able to control his foreign fighters.

General Dostum, who has changed sides three times during 22 years of war in Afghanistan, appears to have been been anxious not only to take possession of the Taleban’s military assets in Konduz, but also to persuade its fighters to join his own army, and so strengthen his hand in forthcoming talks on the country’s future.

Shortly after General Dostum announced his success, Yunus Qanuni, the Alliance Interior Minister and a close ally of General Dawood, said: “The surrender talks have failed, and now we are forced to choose the military option.”

General Dawood’s forces are arrayed to the east, north and south of Konduz.

His deputy, General Shak Jahan, said that he believed there to be 120 Taleban tanks in Konduz, along with 400 artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns and more than 1,000 Soviet-built armoured personnel carriers. General Dawood is thought to have just eight serviceable helicopters, while it is unclear whether General Dostum has any.

Remarkably, senior Alliance figures conceded that the real trophy for the eventual conquerer of Konduz will be more prosaic. As winter sets in it will become increasingly difficult to move forces quickly over the mountainous terrain. Both men are now said to be desperate to seize the Taleban’s huge fleet of battered Toyota pick-up trucks.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001