Hi all; Mazar-e-Sharif prison riot, according to National Geographic. Good article, click on it and read it, also comes with a photo gallery:
Dispatch From Afghanistan: Aftermath of Fort Uprising
Robert Young Pelton, National Geographic News, November 28, 2001
Robert Young Pelton is in Afghanistan following the U.S. military campaign against the Taliban and efforts to track down Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire fugitive, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and other incidents of terrorism. NationalGeographic.com/news will publish his periodic reports from the field. Below, Pelton talks with Brian Handwerk in a phone interview.
Where are you now, and what's happening on the ground?
I'm staying as a guest of General Abdul Rashid Dostum about two miles from his military headquarters, which is the Qalai Janghi fort [outside Mazar-e Sharif].
What's the latest on the situation at the fort and with the battle there?
I visited the fort today [Wednesday] with General Dostum and they had collected the Northern Alliance dead, which numbered about 40. There were about 32 Taliban or al-Qaida bodies left there. The exterior of the fort had a large chunk taken out of it from a misdirected American bomb, and inside there had been a number of hits from the U.S. Air Force. It's also a major arms cache, so there were literally thousands of munitions strewn about the place. It was a scene of fierce fighting, so the Red Cross was collecting the bodies today. I also went there with two captured Taliban commanders to view the scene as well. They are staying at Dostum's house with us.
How did the prison fighting happen?
It happened because they weren't being rough with the Taliban, they were treating them with respect, according to the Afghan concept of hospitality. But most of the prisoners were foreigners—what you'd call the al-Qaida group, which is not a term that's used here, by the way; they call them "tourists"—who decided that they wanted to take out as many opposition soldiers as possible. So the mistake the Northern Alliance forces made was in not tying up the prisoners. It's an Afghan cultural thing—they treated them with respect, and that's what they got for their generosity.
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news.nationalgeographic.com
-- Carl |
