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Northern alliance: intensify attacks
By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer
10/26/01
DASHTAK, Afghanistan — The United States needs to intensify its attacks on Taliban forces and should do a better job of coordinating the assault with opposition fighters, a senior official in the northern alliance said Friday.
Abdullah, the foreign minister of the Afghan government-in-exile, also expressed confidence that Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network who is the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks and is hiding in Afghanistan, would be captured.
"There was a lot of room for better conduct of this operation,'' Abdullah, who uses one name, told The Associated Press in an interview in the village of Dashtak in the Panjshir Valley north of the Afghan capital Kabul.
Abdullah, who has emerged as a key spokesman for the opposition forces known as the northern alliance, arrived Thursday in the Panjshir Valley to consult with opposition commanders and survey the front line.
American warplanes began bombing the Taliban front line Sunday and the air attacks have continued daily. Abdullah said those U.S. efforts were insufficient.
"For example, the intensities of the strikes on the Taliban front lines could have been more concentrated. There could have been much better impact,'' Abdullah said, saying the U.S. needed more firepower on the front line.
"They (the Taliban) have been hit badly, but they could have been hit 10 times harder had there been different tactics,'' Abdullah told AP. "It (the Taliban) has been struck, hurt and hit but it is still there.''
Abdullah said that the U.S. attacks had damaged the ability of terrorists to operate in Afghanistan but they had not been completely destroyed.
After arriving in Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country in 1996, bin Laden has run a network of terrorist camps across the country where militants from many foreign countries are believed to have trained.
"There are terrorist groups still in Afghanistan,'' Abdullah said, adding that they were not operating as freely as before the strikes began and that their capacity to strike had been damaged.
Asked to comment on whether U.S.-led efforts to capture bin Laden would be successful, Abdullah replied: "Where would he go? If the Taliban are defeated, he cannot escape, where would he go? He doesn't have popular support, neither he nor the Taliban.''
Abdullah said that the northern alliance's key goal of removing the Taliban from power had not changed and that seizing Kabul was not the opposition's primary objective.
"Today Kabul is not the highest priority. It is not restricted to a single town or a single target,'' Abdullah said. He said it was very important for the opposition to open new supply lines for ammunition, weapons and food from the north.
He also said that the northern alliance was still waiting for a new government to be put together that would replace the Taliban before advancing on Kabul.
"We will pursue a strategy of hitting the weakest target of the Taliban to get the best results with the fewest casualties on our side,'' Abdullah said. The sound of artillery and rocket fire exchanges between Taliban and northern alliance forces could be heard in the background as he spoke.
He said northern alliance officials were in contact every day with the United States but that there should be better coordination and that more U.S. firepower would be necessary if the Taliban were to be ousted quickly.
"If it (bombing campaign) is done in the same way, it is going to be prolonged more than weeks,'' Abdullah said.
And he urged the world to help Afghanistan, a country that has been at war since before the Soviet Union invaded in 1979. "With the support of the world we can heal some of the wounds of the past,'' Abdullah said.