Sydney Morning Herald

Troops ready to storm Taliban spiritual home

By Sean Rayment in London, Alex Spillius in Quetta and agencies

Allied commanders are finalising plans for more than 25,000 United States paratroopers, supported by British troops, to launch a ground offensive to crush the Taliban's last stand in their spiritual capital, Kandahar.

US military chiefs believe they will need thousands of soldiers to destroy the Taliban fighters massed in and around the city.

Western leaders want Kandahar to fall to an international force rather than to the Afghan opposition, which now controls much of the country and was preparing last night for a battle for the last Taliban stronghold in the north, Kunduz.

The leaders are concerned that the Northern Alliance will become too dominant, undermining hopes that peace talks beginning in Germany tomorrow will lead to a broad, multi-ethnic administration.

The US is also reported to be moving several hundred special forces troops into eastern Afghanistan where the terrorist leader Osama bin Laden is reported to be hiding, protected by up to 2,000 fanatical supporters.

Australian SAS soldiers have linked up with the US special forces but it is not known if they will be involved in any of these operations.

It is understood that the push to take Kandahar is likely to begin soon after the fall of Kunduz.

Yesterday, 600 Taliban fighters in dozens of vehicles were reported to have left Kunduz before a deadline set by the Northern Alliance to surrender or die.

The Taliban fighters were heading west towards Mazar-e-Sharif, base of the Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

"Six hundred people have surrendered to us," General Dostum said. "Some of them are foreign mercenaries."

The Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) yesterday quoted sources inside Kunduz as saying that the Taliban had handed over military installations and positions to the general's forces. It said 2,000 of his troops had entered Kunduz on Saturday night and another 500 yesterday.

The Second Battalion of Britain's Parachute Regiment is on standby to go to Kandahar, where its soldiers would join the 25,000 US paratroopers to encircle the city.

Although US-backed tribal forces began advancing on Kandahar on Saturday, cutting off a supply line, the allies believe the Southern Alliance is not strong enough to defeat the estimated 6,000 Taliban troops in the city.

The allies also do not want the Northern Alliance to advance south, for fear of inflaming ethnic tension.

The prospect of an imminent allied ground offensive was strengthened when, in a Thanksgiving address, the US President, George Bush, told Americans to brace themselves for "difficult times ahead" as the offensive in Afghanistan entered a more dangerous phase.

Despite recent gains against the Taliban and bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, Mr Bush said: "The fight we have begun will not be quickly or easily finished."

He and his Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, last week told the 101st Airborne Division and the 82nd Airborne that the most difficult part in defeating the Taliban and finding bin Laden was still to come. This was a strong indication that the two divisions were about to join the campaign.

Before Britain agrees to the Kandahar mission, tensions that arose last week would need to be solved. There is concern that the US does not see the need to deliver aid and give Afghanistan a stable broad-based government.

The Telegraph, London; The New York Times

-- Anonymous, November 25, 2001