Anti-Taleban troops begin assault on Kunduz

22 Nov, 2001 09:41 PM5 mins to read

8.10 am

KABUL/MAZAR-I-SHARIF - The Northern Alliance says it has begun an assault to take Kunduz by force after the failure of talks on a Taleban surrender in the besieged northern city.

Despite an announcement by a top Northern Alliance commander that surrender terms had been agreed, Alliance Interior Minister Yunus Qanuni said the deal had fallen through.

"We have tried to settle the issue of Kunduz through negotiation but we have been forced to choose a military solution," Qanuni told Reuters in an interview in Kabul.

"At the moment our forces are advancing. We hope by tomorrow we will have secured Kunduz."

Thousands of Taleban fighters and Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens linked to militant fugitive Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network are encircled in Kunduz, the Taleban's last redoubt in the north of Afghanistan.

Qanuni said 15,000 Taleban troops, including 9000 to 10,000 foreigners, were in Kunduz city and its surroundings.

He said Taleban forces in the city never meant to lay down their arms: "They had no intention of surrendering."

Alliance forces suspended the assault earlier this week to allow talks, but Reuters reporters saw Alliance fighters massed east of Kunduz firing rockets at Taleban positions today. Alliance commanders said they were also advancing from the west.

They also said US bombing raids went on all day, the 47th day of attacks on the Taleban for harbouring bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Northern Alliance warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum held surrender talks with Taleban commander Mullah Faizal in Mazar-i-Sharif, saying they had agreed to allow Afghan Taleban fighters safe passage and try foreign al Qaeda troops.

"I think they will surrender on Saturday and Sunday," Dostum said. About 200 Afghan Taleban decided not to wait, leaving Kunduz on Thursday in 15 vehicles to give themselves up, Reuters reporters at the front said.

The Northern Alliance says Afghan Taleban in the city have been ready to surrender for days, but their al Qaeda comrades, fearing they would get little mercy if they surrendered, were fighting to the death and executing would-be deserters.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday that 400 to 600 bodies were found in Mazar-i-Sharif after its capture by the Northern Alliance.

A spokeswoman could not say whether the dead had been executed or killed in fighting before the town fell.

"I know 400 to 600 bodies have been found and that we have so far buried 300," she said. "I cannot say how they died." She could not say whether the dead were Afghans or foreigners.

If Kunduz were to fall, the Taleban would be left in control only of Kandahar, home of their supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and nearby southern provinces.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said US planes bombed targets around Kandahar on Thursday. Anti-Taleban tribal leader Hamid Karzai told Reuters by satellite phone from central Afghanistan that the militia was on the defensive even around Kandahar.

"They have suffered heavily in the past few days from US bombing and also ambushes by common people," Karzai said.

The reports could not be independently verified.

In the border town of Spin Boldak yesterday, Tayab Agha, spokesman for Mullah Omar, demanded an end to US bombing and vowed the Taleban would never surrender in the south.

Asked whether the Taleban were still in contact with bin Laden, Agha said at a news conference: "There is no relation right now, there is no communication."

He said the Taleban did not know where bin Laden was.

US-led forces have been scouring southern Afghanistan for bin Laden. The US military is broadcasting radio messages into Afghanistan offering up to $US25 million ($62 million) for information leading to the capture of bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

Also yesterday, Pakistan ordered the closure of the Taleban's only remaining foreign mission, in Islamabad.

Tribal leaders in south Afghanistan, ethnic Pashtuns like most of the Taleban, warned the Northern Alliance not to march on Kandahar, the radical Taleban militia's spiritual home.

The capture of Kabul on November 13 by the Alliance, dominated by Tajiks and Uzbeks, has worried Pashtuns, the largest Afghan ethnic group.

They fear the Alliance might seek to cling to power rather than build an inclusive government that represents all of Afghanistan's ethnic groups and political factions.

Afghans remember the vicious 1990s civil war, in which mujahideen leaders now in the Northern Alliance turned on each other. Some 50,000 were killed in Kabul alone over five years.

Trying to avoid a rerun, the United Nations has persuaded rival factions to attend Roundtable talks in a German castle on November 26, promising a voice to all ethnic groups, including the Pashtuns. But the Taleban will not be invited.

The talks will try to create a provisional council to pave the way for a Loya Jirga -- a traditional assembly of faction chiefs and tribal elders -- to select a transitional government until a constitution is adopted and elections held.

Fighting west of Kabul yesterday stoked fears that factional blood-letting had already begun.

The fighting appeared to involve the mainly Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, their Shi'ite allies, a hardline Sunni warlord and the Taleban. But, as is often the case in Afghanistan, it was unclear on which side each was fighting.

- REUTERS

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