Aid workers rush to stay ahead of snow

11/06/2001

By LEE HANCOCK / The Dallas Morning News

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – U.S. warplanes intensified attacks on Taliban front lines Monday, and aid workers scrambled to move in food and other aid before ground movement in much of Afghanistan stops with the onset of winter.

B-52s rocked Taliban positions near the Tajik border and a base north of Kabul, the Afghan capital. The Taliban's ambassador in Islamabad reported heavy strikes Monday near the city of Mazar-e Sharif.

Taliban and opposition officials confirmed renewed fighting near the northern crossroads city, which opposition Northern Alliance forces have struggled to regain since it fell to the ruling Afghan regime in 1998.

Also Monday, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported the first strikes in four days in the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

More signs emerged on Monday of a growing U.S. ground presence in northern Afghanistan. Opposition Interior Minister Yunis Qanoni told The Associated Press that a five-man U.S. military team landed on Sunday near the front at Golbahar, about 40 miles north of Kabul, "to help coordinate efforts in the war."

The team, which flew in by twin-engine plane from Tajikistan, was expected to study a new landing strip for possible supply flights to the opposition. A major opposition supply route from Tajikistan has already been blocked by snow.

U.S. airstrikes began Oct. 7 after Taliban officials refused to surrender Saudi exile Osama bin Laden. U.S. officials consider him the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, the Taliban's chief diplomat in Islamabad continued an escalating war of words with the United Nations. He told reporters on Monday that the international body was mishandling the distribution of humanitarian aid to his country.

"It is unfortunate that the U.N. does not realize the problems of the Afghan nation," said Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef. "Unfortunately, they mix up humanitarian issues with political issues."

A U.N. spokeswoman in Islamabad disputed that, noting that U.N. officials were doing everything possible to rush food and other humanitarian aid into the country, despite security problems that include Taliban confiscation of U.N. offices and vehicles in Kandahar.

"I think it's very clear that we are not playing politics," said the spokeswoman, Stephanie Bunker.

With several feet of snow already blanketing high mountain passes, U.N. officials estimate that 5.3 million people across the country will need immediate aid to survive the winter.

More than 600,000 are in the central highlands and other mountainous areas of the north that are expected to be cut off within weeks by winter snows, she and other U.N. officials have said.

U.N. aid specialists are racing to move food and other humanitarian aid, scrambling to line up more trucks, snowplows, and other cold-weather equipment to keep supplies moving by ground as long as possible, said Lindsey Davis, spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

Aid workers have established a base camp below a crucial pass leading into the Panjshir Valley, and commercial truckers are being offered subsidized gasoline at half the market rate to speed the movement of supplies, she said.

"The fear is that with the worsening conditions, the window of time for ... [the trucks] to continue to operate is closing, slowly but surely," she said.

Officials are also stocking up on waterproof food bags for planned airdrops after roads become impassible, Ms. Davis said. Unlike regular U.N. food bags, the new supplies are colored black so they can be spotted in snow, she said.

Taliban officials in Islamabad declared on Monday that the four-week U.S. bombing campaign was the sole cause of their country's growing humanitarian crisis.

"The oppressed people of Afghanistan, due to the cruel U.S. attacks, are urged to leave their homes and emigrate and face a human catastrophe," Mr. Zaeef said.

He said that 10 people were killed and another 15 injured by U.S. bombing raids in a village outside Mazar-e Sharif. The reports could not be independently verified.

Pentagon officials have repeatedly charged that the Taliban regime is grossly exaggerating civilian casualties.

In Jabal Saraj, near the Tajik border, opposition political leaders reviewed troops Monday and said they were ready to strike the capital. But the Northern Alliance has launched no large-scale offensive despite weeks of predictions by commanders that ground action was only days away.

A U.S. military official said in Washington that air attacks on Taliban front-line positions have recently intensified in hopes that they will soon be softened enough to persuade the Northern Alliance to launch an all-out attack.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in Pakistan on Sunday that the air effort had effectively shut down the Taliban government and crippled its ability to make "major military moves."

Wrapping up his latest tour of the region Monday, Mr. Rumsfeld said in India that "the effectiveness of bombing is improving every day," thanks to improved targeting intelligence from U.S. military teams in Afghanistan.

But Mr. Zaeef scoffed at suggestions that the Taliban regime might be weakening. "The Taliban is the heart of the Afghan people," he said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan was checking the identification documents of a possible American citizen who died in Taliban custody last week.

Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross received the documents Sunday from the Taliban in the southern city of Kandahar and turned them over to the U.S. mission for confirmation.

"We're trying to verify the authenticity of the documents, and if so we will attempt to contact the family," said embassy spokesman Mark Wentworth, adding that he did not know the name in the documents.

Taliban spokesmen said Sunday that a man identified as John Bolton of California had died from natural causes two weeks after he was arrested in Spinboldak, near the Pakistani border city of Chaman.

He identified himself as a humanitarian relief worker but was arrested on suspicion of spying, Taliban officials said. His health deteriorated in prison, and he died in a Kandahar hospital, they added.

Knight Ridder Newspapers contributed to this report.