Slaughter poses US dilemma

14 Nov, 2001 07:41 AM3 mins to read

By JUSTIN HUGGLER and ANDREW BUNCOMBE

TALOQAN - The blood of Taleban soldiers was still smeared across the road to Taloqan, great dark-red stains where the pools had dried in the sun. In a house rapidly converted to his headquarters, Commander Haji Agha Gul showed off his Taleban prisoners.

"I only let this man live because he is my countryman," he said, gesturing to a tall Pashtun captive. "If he was one of the foreigners, I would have killed him."

The Taleban are being routed across Afghanistan, but it is the foreign volunteers, many of them believed to be members of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, who are being slaughtered.

"They made me fight. I did not want to," is the refrain of Afghan Taleban prisoners.

"I hate the foreigners," said Sakhi Mohammed, the Pashtun prisoner, looking up at Commander Gul. "They brought this problem to Afghanistan, making us fight against each other."

The Northern Alliance are winning the war to a large extent on the back of defections by key Afghan Taleban commanders. Changing allegiance is the traditional way of war in Afghanistan.

But as Afghans try to reunite with each other, the "Arab Afghans" as they became known - though many are from Pakistan and Chechnya - are becoming the scapegoats.

In one sense it could not have worked out better for the Americans: bin Laden's men are being killed while the Afghans try to mend bridges with each other.

But the US is becoming uneasy at the growing evidence of summary executions and massacres of Taleban soldiers, and yesterday the Government urged the Northern Alliance to show restraint and recognise the rights of prisoners.

Graphic photographs in the New York Times - of a wounded Taleban soldier being dragged along a track by Northern Alliance fighters before pleading for his life and then being shot - have shocked Americans.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President George W. Bush was "very pleased" with the progress of the military operation, despite earlier requests that the Northern Alliance fighters should not enter Kabul. But it was "important for all parties to conduct themselves in a way that is consistent with human rights".

For the Arab Afghans, surrender is not an option now. Thousands were still in Kunduz yesterday, vowing to fight to the last.

The executions present a difficulty for Washington. While it may wish to be rid of bin Laden's largely Arab fighters, it cannot be seen to condone brutality by the Northern Alliance forces if it wishes to retain any sort of international coalition. Instead Bush continues to talk of "bringing al Qaeda to justice".

Spokeswoman Victoria Clarke was unable to say what the US military might do to prevent the reported looting and killing.

"I am aware of the media reports," she said. "But what we have seen so far in places where the Taleban and the al Qaeda are leaving and the Northern Alliance and opposition groups are going in, they have been pretty uniformly welcomed."

- INDEPENDENT

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