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Report: Taliban leader to leave Kandahar
11/17/2001
By KATHY GANNON KABUL, Afghanistan — In twin blows to the Taliban and al-Qaida, the regime's
supreme leader was reported ready Friday to abandon his home base of Kandahar,
and U.S. officials disclosed that Osama bin Laden's military chief may have been
killed. The developments came as U.S. warplanes struck the Taliban's two remaining
strongholds, Kandahar and the northern city of Kunduz, on the first day of the
Muslim holy month of Ramadan. If confirmed, the death of bin Laden's military chief Mohammed Atef would
deal a serious setback to the al-Qaida terrorist network. Its Taliban protectors are already reeling from sweeping territorial losses
and their flight from the capital, Kabul, this week. U.S. officials said the
Taliban had lost control of more than two-thirds of Afghanistan. Atef was a close confidant of bin Laden, and his daughter was married to bin
Laden's son. U.S. officials suspect him of involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks
on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which triggered the current military
confrontation. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Atef is believed
to have died during an American airstrike earlier this week near Kabul, the
Afghan capital. Another official said Atef's body has not been located. At Great Lakes, Ill., Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said U.S. special
forces troops have engaged in ground combat in Afghanistan, ``killing Taliban
that won't surrender'' as well as al-Qaida terrorists. No Americans have been killed or wounded in the encounters, he said while
disclosing that hundreds of U.S. special operations troops are on the ground in
northern and southern Afghanistan assisting opposition forces and hunting
al-Qaida leaders. Rumsfeld previously had indicated that their numbers were in
the dozens. ``They have gone into places and met resistance and dealt with it,'' he told
reporters while flying from Washington to the Navy's recruit training center,
where he spoke at a graduation ceremony. The report that the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was ready to leave
Kandahar would be a dramatic development, if borne out — amounting to Taliban
abandonment of the city that was its birthplace. American military officials
were skeptical. ``I don't put much stock in at this point. I don't believe it,'' said
Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, in Washington. ``I think that our forces who are there are still operating under the
assumption that it is a hostile environment. I think the opposition groups are
operating in the same way.'' The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency said Omar had agreed to leave
the city within 24 hours and would head for the mountains, turning it over to
local leaders from Pashtun tribes — ethnic kin to most of the top Taliban
leadership. Under the deal reportedly reached with tribal leaders, control of the city
would pass to Mullah Naqibullah and Haji Basher, two former commanders of Afghan
resistance forces in the war against Soviet invaders. Basher is close to Yunus
Khalis, a Pashtun leader who took over the northeastern city of Jalalabad this
week. An official of Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, a Pakistan-based group allied with the
Taliban, said Omar was pressured by local leaders to leave the city and end U.S.
attacks. Reluctantly, Omar accepted the deal Friday night in return for safe
passage out of the city, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The South Asian Dispatch Agency quoted Taliban official Mohammad Jamal as
confirming the decision to leave Kandahar, saying ``we have been asked to
re-group to prepare for the next phase of jihad,'' or holy war. The agency's correspondent in Kandahar reported several pickup trucks loaded
with Taliban fighters heading south out of the city. Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun leader who has been trying to organize an
anti-Taliban uprising, told CNN that Taliban leaders would be offered amnesty if
they surrendered and gave up their weapons. If they leave Kandahar, he said,
they would have nowhere else to go. Karzai's brother Ahmed told The Associated Press that Hamid Karzai was now in
control of the capital of Uruzgan province, Tarin Kot. The Taliban governor has
left the province, and Karzai moved in Friday, Ahmed Karzai said in a telephone
interview from the southern Pakistani city of Quetta. Contradictory reports about conditions inside Kandahar had swirled in past
days. U.S. officials had said there were reports of street fighting, but
arriving refugees and even a leader of Pashtun anti-Taliban forces had said the
Taliban appeared to retain their grip on the city. U.S. planes bombed Kandahar again overnight, continuing a pattern of
relentless strikes on the city and its environs. The Afghan Islamic Press said
the Taliban's foreign ministry office was wrecked, along with a mosque located
in the eastern part of the city. It claimed at least 11 civilians were killed, but that could not be
independently confirmed. In the north of Afghanistan, fighters from the northern alliance were laying
siege to the city of Kunduz, backed by U.S. airstrikes. ``Kunduz is at a
standoff,'' Stufflebeem said, ``and there are a number of reports that indicate
there are ... forces determined to fight and they're dug in.'' The defenders include an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 foreigners loyal to bin
Laden. They are much less likely than Afghan Taliban to simply negotiate a
surrender or slip away, as the bulk of Taliban forces did in the northern city
of Mazar-e-Sharif and in Kabul. Northern alliance officials said there had been no breakthrough in
negotiations for the city's surrender. Some Muslim nations, notably U.S. ally Pakistan, had urged restraint during
Ramadan. However, Pakistan noted a reduction in the intensity of the strikes — a
move that reflects a U.S. strategy more geared toward tightly targeted raids
from the air, coupled with the presence of U.S. special forces on the ground.
In other developments: —Aides to Afghanistan's former king expressed concern Friday that the
northern alliance appeared unwilling to participate in a U.N.-backed meeting to
plan a postwar transitional government. United Nations hopes to preside over a
careful, rational reorganization of Afghanistan are quickly being outstripped by
the power grabs of warlords who are filling the vacuum left by departing Taliban
forces. —British troops arrived at the Bagram airfield, north of Kabul, on what the
Ministry of Defense said was a mission to prepare the facility for use in a
future humanitarian mission. France sent its first contingent of soldiers to
northern Afghanistan on Friday as part of an international effort to help secure
the area for the delivery of humanitarian aid. —Al-Qaida had a formula for making ricin, one of the deadliest known poisons,
The Times of London newspaper reported Friday. The Times said it found
instructions for making the biological chemical ricin — an untraceable poison
that is twice as deadly as cobra venom — in an al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul. —The United Nations moved another 220 tons of food to Afghanistan from
Uzbekistan on Friday, part of an effort to increase supplies in the country as
winter approaches. It estimates that some 3 million Afghans depend on food aid.
The area most in need is the north of the country, which borders Uzbekistan.
— Five British Muslims have been killed along with scores of other foreign
volunteers fighting for the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, officials of
Islamic militant groups said Friday in Islamabad.
Associated Press Writer
Weapons left
by the Taliban in Kabul
AP