Taliban officials flee Afghan capital

KABUL - Officials of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban movement have started to flee the capital, Kabul, amid growing expectations the United States is preparing a punishing attack on the purist Islamic movement, witnesses said on Monday.

Taliban officials and their families were heading out of the city for the relative safety of the countryside, but it was not clear if this was under instructions from their spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, the witnesses said.

Tens of thousands of Afghans streamed out of major cities and headed toward the borders with Pakistan and Iran, amid fears the United States is preparing to unleash a "mighty war" on the land that has harbored Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in last week's terror attacks in New York and Washington.

Trying to stave off war, Pakistani officials held talks in the southern city of Kandahar with reclusive Taliban leader Mullar Mohammad Omar to ask him to hand over bin Laden or face the wrath of a full U.S. military offensive.

The United States has threatened to retaliate against bin Laden, the Saudi-born zealot whom Washington accuses of being behind Tuesday's devastating terror attacks in Washington and New York, as well as those who protect him.

The fleeing Taliban officials appeared mainly to be junior commanders and officials, witnesses said.

The majority of the leadership is based in Kandahar.

Witnesses said hundreds of ordinary residents of the capital were also trying to escape.

"Better leave now before you are trapped," said one Kabul resident.

Fear of reprisal has triggered a rush to get families out of the cities. Thousands of people have flooded over the eastern border to the already overflowing refugee camps of Pakistan.

"We are preparing for the influx of tens of thousands of people who are now on their way toward the borders of the neighboring countries," said Yusuf Hassan, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad.

The exodus of Afghans was flowing out of the capital, Kabul, the southern city of Kandahar and eastern Jalalabad, he said. Others were heading toward Iran from Herat in the east and Mazar-i-Sharif in the north.

Iran has already closed its border with Afghanistan.

Hassan said tightened security at Pakistani border posts had left several thousand Afghans stranded in villages near the border and it was difficult to assess the exact number of people on the move.

But he said reports from UNHCR field staff suggested most of the refugees are moving toward Pakistan, which has tightened security at its porous 1,400-km (880-mile) border with Afghanistan.

These who couldn't leave were bracing for war, stocking up on food as prices soared and the Afghani currency slid.

With Iran having sealed its border with Afghanistan, opposition fighters controlling a narrow northern corridor and Pakistan pledging to support U.S. anti-terrorism efforts, Kabul residents were feeling increasingly vulnerable.

Mullah Omar, the Taliban's spiritual leader, on Sunday called an urgent meeting of senior clerics to discuss the defense of his isolated nation and appealed to other Muslim nations for help.

"As regards the possible attack by America on the sacred soil of Afghanistan, veteran honorable ulemas (clerics) should come to Kabul for a Sharia decision," Mullah Omar said in a statement broadcast on the Taliban's Voice of Shariat radio.

Information Minister Qudratullah Jamal said the meeting of about 1,000 delegates would take place by Wednesday and Omar - who rarely ventures outside Kandahar - would not attend.

The Taliban insist neither they nor bin Laden had the capacity to organize an international plot that saw trained pilots hijack large passenger jets and crash them into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

- REUTERS

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