Nov 24, 2001
Hundreds of Kunduz Defenders Said to Be Surrendering as
Northern Alliance Moves to Take Besieged City
By Ellen Knickmeyer
Associated Press Writer
BANGI, Afghanistan (AP) - Six hundred foreign fighters believed loyal to Osama bin Laden handed over
their weapons to anti-Taliban forces Saturday, the northern alliance said as it marched on the
besieged city of Kunduz.
An alliance commander characterized the handover as the beginning of a wholesale surrender of the
defenders of Kunduz, but fears remained that other foreign fighters inside the city would choose to
fight to the death rather than turn themselves in.
"The 600 foreign fighters, who are Chechens, Arabs, and some Pakistanis, surrendered with their
weapons," said Amanullah Khan, a northern alliance spokesman.
An alliance commander on the other side of the city, Gen. Daoud Khan, said more surrenders were
expected. "It has just started. Maybe another 700 more will be handed over. We should have all these
prisoners handed over in next day or two days."
The surrender took place in the village of Qalai Qul Mohammed, west of Kunduz, where the foreign
fighters were surrounded after breaking through alliance front lines, alliance commanders said.
The surrendering fighters were taken to the nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif by forces of the three main
generals in northern Afghanistan: Rashid Dostum, Atta Mohammed and Mohammed Mohaqik.
More foreign fighters were believed holed up in Kunduz itself, which alliance forces vowed to take after
12 days in which the front lines changed little.
"Maybe tonight or tomorrow we will enter into Kunduz," Gen. Khan said on Kunduz's eastern front line.
The Taliban governor trapped in the city - whose name, like the Taliban supreme leader, is Mohammed
Omar - said his fighters would walk out "peacefully and unarmed."
Speaking by satellite telephone from inside Kunduz, he told Britain's Channel 4 television: "The Taliban
brothers who are from other provinces of Afghanistan, they have a way out."
But it was unclear whether he spoke for the foreign fighters as well, who have no such guarantees for
free passage out of Kunduz.
Under a deal negotiated between the alliance and the Taliban in recent days, the foreign fighters are
to be put in detention camps pending an investigation into their links to bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist
network.
Gen. Khan said the foreigners would be tried in "Islamic courts" in Afghanistan.
But many feared the alliance fighters, whose hatred of the foreign fighters is intense, would slaughter
them rather than send them to trial.
An American official in Washington said some of the fighters in the besieged city may be deputies and
lieutenants to bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks which sparked the U.S.-led
attacks on the Taliban.
It had been feared that those inside Kunduz would choose to fight to the death.
Ordering a commander to march on Kunduz on Saturday morning, Gen. Khan said: "Bring up the tanks
and troops to go into Kunduz. If the foreigners fight you, fight."
At the United Nations, officials announced a one-day delay for a conference in Germany aimed at
paving the way for a new Afghan government following the Taliban's collapse. The meeting will now
open Tuesday because of delays in getting participants to the venue in Bonn, U.N. spokesman Ahmad
Fawzi said.
In the days before the surrender began, Gen. Khan said, he believed Pakistani fighters were fleeing by
plane out of the city's half-destroyed airport, although a spokesman for the U.S. military said there
was nothing to indicate any such evacuation.
"We control the skies over Afghanistan and we would not let anyone fly out and take people who we
have repeatedly said wouldn't be allowed to leave," Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Lapan said in
Washington.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has repeatedly appealed for measures to save Pakistani
fighters who joined the Taliban side, fearing they face slaughter if the northern alliance seizes the city.
A militant Islamic group in Pakistan, which claims to have sent thousands of Pakistanis to fight
alongside the Taliban, threatened to target Afghan refugees in Pakistan if its supporters are executed
in Kunduz.
"People are angry and will target Afghan refugees belonging to northern alliance areas if our people are
executed or treated unfairly," said Maulvi Mohammed Khalid Khan, one of the group's leaders.
Alliance troops had already been moving incrementally toward Kunduz. Gen. Khan said his fighters
moved Friday into the Taliban-held town of Aliabad, just south of Kunduz, where militia fighters gave
up without a fight. A U.S. official also reported fighting near the town of Khanabad, just to the east.
Fighting also continued further south near Kabul in the village of Maidan Shahr, where alliance fighters
have been attacking Taliban holdouts in the rocky, barren hills.
And in the area outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, where bin Laden was spotted just before the
U.S.-led bombing began and could still be hiding in caves, U.S. bombs continued to fall overnight and
early Saturday.
A U.S. official reported Friday that the northern alliance might be making its move toward the Taliban's
last remaining area of control, in the south.
Advance elements of an alliance force have entered Helmand province, just to the west of the Taliban
base of Kandahar, the official said.
AP-ES-11-24-01 0425EST
This story can be found at : http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGADLL18FUC.html
-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001
BBC -
Taleban troops in
Kunduz surrender
Alliance troops are massing around Kunduz
At least 1,000 Taleban fighters have
surrendered to commanders of the Northern
Alliance, as alliance forces tighten their grip
around the city of Kunduz,
Alliance commanders say they are hopeful this
is the start of a general surrender of all
Taleban forces in the city, the last Taleban
foothold in the north.
The BBC's Rupert
Wingfield-Hayes,
reporting from outside
the city, says about 20
vehicles full of armed
Taleban came out of
Kunduz.
Still carrying their rifles
and grenade launchers,
they headed for the
town of Taloqan to
surrender.
There are reports that
a further 600 Taleban -
including some non-Afghans - have given
themelves in to forces under the command of
Uzbek General Rashid Dostum outside the
nearby city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
"Six hundred people have surrendered to us.
Some of them are foreign mercenaries,"
General Dostum told Reuters news agency.
Click here for map of the battlegrounds
"We will now separate the local Taleban forces
from the foreigners."
Another Northern Alliance spokesman,
Amanullah Khan, said the fighters, believed to
include Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs, had
been brought to Mazar on Friday night.
In other developments:
Former Afghan President Burhanuddin
Rabbani says he has no "personal
ambitions" in a future administration
The United Nations food agency has
begun airlifting supplies to the
mountainous north-east of Afghanistan
UN-sponsored talks on Afghanistan's
future, due to be held in the German city
of Bonn, are delayed until Tuesday
A grave containing the bodies of 12
mujahideen with their hands tied behind
their backs is discovered near the
western Afghan city of Herat
The partial surrender follows 10 days of
withering bombardment from Northern Alliance
forces backed by US B-52 bombers, which are
said to have been in action again on Saturday.
Terrified civilians have been fleeing the city,
braving the bombing in order to escape to
safety, but tens of thousands remain trapped.
Northern Alliance
forces have meanwhile
been advancing on the
town of Khanabad, a
key gateway to
Kunduz.
A correspondent for
the French news
agency AFP watched
alliance fighters armed
with mortars and
machine guns attacking
the village of
Devairone, about five
kilometres south of Khanabad.
Earlier, the alliance said they had taken over
the small town of Aliabad, just south-west of
Khanabad, without a fight.
Further south, there appears to have been an
agreement between the northern Alliance and
Taleban forces to end the fighting in Maidan
Shahr, a village about 30 kilometres (20 miles)
south-west of Kabul.
The BBC's Nick Childs says it is not clear
whether the Taleban agreed to surrender all
their weapons, but he saw Northern Alliance
troops heading towards Taleban lines to
oversee a handover.
'Surrender deal'
With events moving swiftly in Kunduz, General
Dostum is claiming to have struck a deal for
the handover of the city on Sunday.
But our correspondent
says such claims have
been made before and
little has changed on
the ground.
The deal would
reportedly allow Afghan
Taleban soldiers to lay
down their weapons
and return to their
home provinces in the
south.
But there would be no
such safe passage for
foreign Taleban fighters.
Both Pakistan and Britain say the US-led
coalition against terrorism is working hard to
avoid a potential massacre of the thousands of
non-Afghan fighters trapped in Kunduz.
Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah
Abdullah told the BBC that the foreign fighters
would be treated as prisoners or war according
to international guidelines, but the treatment
of foreigners during the fall of Kabul and
Mazar-e-Sharif has raised concerns.
The International Red Cross says it has found
between 400 and 600 bodies in Mazar-e-Sharif
following its capture by the Northern Alliance.
It is unclear whether they were killed during
the fighting, or after the capture of the city.
A further complication is the reported tension
between Uzbek and Tajik factions of the
Northern Alliance.
A Taleban spokesman told Reuters that his
forces had reached surrender terms with
General Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, on
Thursday, but that forces loyal to ousted
President Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik,
were unwilling to accept the deal.
-- Anonymous, November 24, 2001