Ike has noted several times that the Afghanistan operation will end much sooner rather than later. Here is another report on the situation there.
Taliban Battered as Afghan Opposition Eyes Kabul
Sunday November 11 11:28 AM ET
dailynews.yahoo.com
By Sayed Salahuddin and Rosalind Russell
KABUL/JABAL-US-SARAJ (Reuters) - Opposition forces in Afghanistan (news - web sites) said Sunday they had destroyed the cream of the Taliban fighting force, were driving ahead on three fronts and might seize the capital, Kabul, despite international pressure to stay out.
Expressing surprise at the Taliban decision not to withdraw earlier, Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah described a series of bloody battles that left the last major Taliban force in the north entirely surrounded in the city of Kunduz.
``The importance of the dramatic defeat of the Taliban...is that they lost their main fighting forces,'' Abdullah told a news conference.
He estimated the original Taliban force in the north at 15,000, including foreign units regarded as the most formidable. He said hundreds of Taliban, including many Pakistanis, had died in fighting around the main city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
The casualties, as with most details in the war in Afghanistan, were impossible to confirm independently.
Abdullah described a sudden collapse of Taliban forces that he said put Northern Alliance forces on the outskirts of Herat, the main city in western Afghanistan, and approaching Kabul after overrunning the city of Bamiyan.
KABUL IN THEIR SIGHTS
Despite Washington repeating Saturday its opposition to the Northern Alliance advancing into Kabul, Abdullah said he would not rule out an attempt to capture the city.
``A political vacuum is a different situation and we have to consult with our Afghan partners and our international partners, mainly the U.N.,'' Abdullah said.
In Kabul, the Taliban set up security checkpoints across the capital. Taliban armed fighters searched vehicles and passengers for arms, satellite telephones and communications equipment.
``For the maintenance of security and order, we are staging these checks to make sure that no opposition fighters sneak in here,'' one Taliban fighter told Reuters on a main Kabul street.
Abdullah echoed the consensus that Afghanistan needs a government representing all factions. But he said Washington should not listen to Pakistan, which opposes the Northern Alliance and has traditionally backed Pashtun leaders, including the Taliban until the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Opposition commanders reported the routes to Herat and Kabul had been opened Sunday by the capture of the western provincial capital Qala-i-Nau and the northern city of Pul-i-Khumri, on the road to Kabul.
U.S. jets kept the pressure on Taliban forces outside Kabul, pounding the Islamic group for the 36th day for harboring Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), Washington's prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon (news - web sites).
``This morning there was fierce fighting in Pul-i-Khumri and we captured it,'' Northern Alliance spokesman Ashraf Nadeem told Reuters. ``We have now reached...the gates of Kabul from the north and our troops can launch an attack for Kabul any time.''
Iranian state radio reported Northern Alliance forces had overrun Bamiyan after the governor and 300 of his men deserted Taliban ranks. Iran has close relations with opposition forces in the area.
Bamiyan was the site of giant statues of the Buddha, Afghanistan's greatest archaeological treasure, which the Taliban blew up in March in their iconoclastic fervor despite an international outcry.
FEARS OF REPRISAL
Britain announced an undisclosed number of its troops were on the ground liaising with opposition forces near Kabul.
The opposition had previously said an offensive would stop outside the city, where they are hated for their power struggles in the 1990s that subjected Kabul to almost daily rocket attacks and killed 50,000 residents.
Pakistan has warned of a repeat of violence in Kabul if the Northern Alliance takes the city. Other countries have also said it could complicate a post-Taliban political settlement.
However, there has been no visible sign of progress on forming a broad-based alternative to the Taliban that would be ready to take power if the hardline militia is driven out.
Opposition commanders said they hoped to advance on Kabul within days. Northern Alliance tanks and artillery have been moving toward the front for two days.
Hundreds of opposition troops, backed by tanks and artillery, have been deployed at Bagram airport north of Kabul ready to assault nearby Taliban positions that make the airport unusable.
The sudden breakthroughs came after weeks of U.S. bombing and increasing questions about the Northern Alliance's ability to mount an attack.
Veteran mujahideen leader Ismail Khan told Reuters his forces had captured the key town of Qala-i-Nau in western Afghanistan Sunday after an intense four-hour battle and were now heading toward Herat.
Khan, a former Herat warlord who was driven out by the Taliban in 1995, said 15 Taliban fighters were killed and some 300 captured in several hours of fighting for Qala-i-Nau, capital of Badghis province, all of which was now under opposition control.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic (AIP) quoted his spokesman as saying they would be able to capture Herat by Monday. Herat is on the main road to southern Kandahar, base of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL
The Taliban said they had strategically withdrawn from three provinces -- but the Northern Alliance said by late Sunday they had captured a total of six northern provinces.
``There is nothing to worry about, our forces are regrouping and we left those places under a strategy,'' a Taliban spokesman said of the capitals of Samangan, Jowzjan and Sara-i-Pol provinces. He denied the opposition had captured Faryab province.
But the Northern Alliance said it swept Taliban forces from all four northern provinces Saturday, a day after taking the key city of Mazar-i-Sharif and its surrounding province, Balkh -- opening the route to Uzbekistan where U.S. forces are based.
Abdullah said the Northern Alliance had also retaken Takhar province Sunday, including the capital Taloqan that was lost a year ago. Northern Alliance radio said 1,000 soldiers had defected from the Taliban in Taloqan.
In Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghans queued at barber shops to shave their beards, music blared from shops and women flung away the head-to-toe burqa veils as the first city taken from the Taliban threw off their draconian rules, AIP said.
The entry of alliance forces late Friday ended the grip of the feared Ministry of the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice -- the religious police -- who implemented harsh rules seen by the Taliban as the purest form of Islam.
Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum told Reuters by satellite telephone the northern border with Uzbekistan along the Amu Darya river -- the ancient Oxus -- remained closed but was under his control.
The victory at Mazar-i-Sharif, astride the road south across the Hindu Kush to Kabul, should clear the way for military and humanitarian aid to anti-Taliban forces and civilians as the bitter winter looms.
At Termez, gateway from Uzbekistan to opposition-controlled Afghanistan, cautious officials did not open the bridge across the river. But preparations were underway for aid to begin moving across the river, initially by barge. |
