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U.S. jets target retreating Taliban
By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer
11/14/01
KABUL, Afghanistan — The northern alliance moved Wednesday to consolidate its grip on Kabul, taking over key posts and ministries despite a pledge to support a broad-based government. Forced to retreat south, the Taliban were reportedly struggling to prevent their movement from disintegrating.
Pashtun tribal leaders in key areas of the south were reportedly in open revolt against the fundamentalist Islamic militia.
In the capital, radio broadcasts resumed and television was promised soon. Northern alliance officials returned to government offices they abandoned in 1996 when the Taliban drove them from power.
Officials portrayed the takeover of key ministries, such as defense and interior, as temporary and said they support a U.N.-supervised political settlement in which all ethnic groups would be represented.
In the south and east of the country, the situation appeared chaotic as local tribal leaders appeared to challenge the Taliban in the ethnic Pashtun heartlands.
Afghan sources in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airport in the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar was held by about 200 fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a member of a southern Pashtun tribe.
A Taliban official along the Pakistani border at Chaman, Mullah Najibullah, said Taliban fighters were firing on the airport Wednesday from hilltop positions.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that tribal elders took control Wednesday of the town of Gardez, in Paktia province about 60 miles south of Kabul.
Followers of a local, independent powerbroker, Yunus Khalis, took control of the Afghan border station at Torkham, a major crossing point into Pakistan.
In Kabul, relieved residents awoke Wednesday after a night free of the nearby crash of U.S. bombs. Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets.
The Taliban abandoned Kabul and headed south before dawn Tuesday after the northern alliance, backed by intensive American bombing, fought their way to the edge of the city.
Supporters say the Taliban's withdrawal from urban areas throughout the country is a strategy that will allow the militia and its allies to wage a guerrilla war from Kandahar's rugged mountains and caves.
U.S. warplanes kept up pressure on the Taliban with more air raids outside the capital Wednesday. American aircraft bombed the airport and military installations around the city of Jalalabad at least six times overnight and early in the morning, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported.
Citing an unidentified Taliban official, the agency also said warplanes attacked a military base in Khost, six miles from the Pakistan border.
Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, who headed a northern alliance radio station before Kabul fell, assumed control of the newly renamed Radio Afghanistan and resumed airing music, which the Taliban had banned as frivolous.
He hired three women as news readers, and aired statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and return to work. Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home except in the health sector.
Daoud Naimi, the new acting director of TV Afghanistan, said he hoped to resume television broadcasts soon. Television was also banned by the Taliban as un-Islamic.
Kabul residents cheerfully abandoned other Taliban edicts — children flew kites, teen-agers listened to music and men shaved their beards. But most women retained their all-encompassing burqas.
The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force. On Tuesday, northern alliance spokesman Abdullah said his movement supported the plan.
For the time being, however, the alliance, especially the Jamiat-e-Islami faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved into key ministries in the capital.
Pakistani intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many Taliban leaders had sent their families across the border into Pakistan under the protection of tribal leaders from their Pashtun ethnic group.
The sources said the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was trying to rally his remaining followers. Omar was either traveling with or was remaining in close communications with terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden, they added.
In a radio address, Omar said he was in Kandahar — a report that could not be verified — and urged his fighters to resist in the name of Islam.
Those who do not are "just like a chicken with its head cut off,'' he said. "It falls in a ditch and dies.''
President Bush ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his suspected role in the September terrorist attacks that killed 4,500 people in the United States.
Under relentless pounding by U.S. planes, Taliban defenses crumbled, first in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and then throughout most of the country.
The Pentagon said U.S. special forces were in southern Afghanistan, working on the next phase of the campaign. U.S military planners think the best course is to approach ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in the south who are unhappy with the Taliban — and persuade them to defect.
In Kabul, a northern alliance official said there were reports of uprisings against the Taliban by residents in eastern Nangarhar province as well as in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak.
The Afghan Islamic Press reported that Nangarhar's capital, Jalalabad, was under the control of Khalis, who declared himself independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance.
Witnesses said Khalis' followers at the Torkham border station were preventing anyone, including Afghans, from entering the country Wednesday.
"People have revolted against the Taliban,'' said Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander who rode triumphantly into Kabul after a string of sudden victories in northern Afghanistan.
Anwari said anti-Taliban fighters held the airport in Kandahar but Taliban forces were in the mountains outside the city. The center of the city was contested, he said, but it was unclear if there was any actual fighting.
In Islamabad, Pakistan, the Taliban deputy ambassador Suhail Shaheen accused the northern alliance of atrocities against people in Kabul and other recently occupied cities and claimed human rights organizations were remaining silent "and watching the bloodshed of innocent people.''
"The Afghans will never accept the murderous communist generals who are being imposed on the Afghans by foreign powers,'' he said.
In other attacks-related news:
— An aide to Afhanistan's exiled monarch, Zaher Shah, said Wednesday that the 87-year-old king was willing to return to Afghanistan. Yusuf Nuristani quoted the king as saying, "I offer myself to serve the nation wholeheartedly to restore peace and security.'' Shah, who ruled for 40 years, has lived in Rome since he was ousted in 1973 in a palace coup.
— The United Nations sent its first delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan on Wednesday, 55 tons of winter supplies via a barge across the Amu Darya River that separates Afghanistan from Uzbekistan. If the shipment is successful, as much as 17,600 tons of aid a month could be routed through northern Afghanistan.
— In London, thousands of British troops were ordered Wednesday to prepare for possible duty in Kabul and other cities of Afghanistan captured from the Taliban regime.