smh.com.au

Mystery man hero of bloody rebellion

By Charles Sennott in Mazar-e-Sharif

An American "military adviser" fought a heroic rescue action with a pistol and a machine-gun as Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners staged a revolt on Sunday.

After helping a German television crew to safety, he told them: "We're afraid we have a man still in there ... I have to go back."

Hundreds were killed when the prisoners took control of one end of a sprawling 19th-century fortress outside the city where they were being held.

Arnim Stauth, of Germany's ARD network, said after he and his crew were out of the fortress, where they had been filming: "We were very happy to have that guy. He killed one of the Taliban with a pistol, then took his machine-gun off him and kept fighting.

"I don't know if we would be alive if it were not for him."

The rebellion was put down by the Northern Alliance with the help of 40 United States special forces, but only after a six-hour battle in the fortress and a wave of precision air strikes from US fighter jets.

An estimated 300 prisoners were killed, US military and Alliance officials said. Alliance losses were estimated at 30.

The mystery American, who was directing air strikes by calling in co-ordinates, told the ARD crew he was a US military adviser. He

gave his name as David, but told the television crew not to film his face.

But there were several minutes of footage that showed him as a large, muscular man with a pocked face and a beard flecked with grey. He was wearing a traditional Afghan tunic.

"We do not control the fort," he said, speaking by satellite phone to a command centre. "We control one end; we control the north end of the fort; the south end is in their hands."

At one stage he was heard to say: "There's hundreds of dead here, at least. I don't know how many Americans were killed. I think one was killed. I'm not sure. I'm not sure ... There were two at least - me and some other guys, and that's about it."

He also gave orders to Northern Alliance soldiers in the fortress in a mix of Uzbek and Dari. They referred to him as Daoud, which in Afghanistan corresponds to David.

In Washington, a Defence Department spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Dan Stoneking, said: "Central command ... said no military personnel were injured in the revolt."

That would not rule out the possibility that CIA operatives or contract employees were injured or killed. The CIA could not be reached for comment.

The Associated Press quoted an anonymous US Government official who said a CIA operative was wounded in the uprising.

More than 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from Kunduz, who had turned themselves in on Saturday, were imprisoned in the mud-brick fortress.

According to witnesses, one of the prisoners had smuggled in a grenade and exploded it, triggering a scene of chaos and a lightning rebellion.

The Boston Globe

-- Anonymous, November 26, 2001