Opposition Launches Push on Kabul; Some Taliban Flee
November 12, 2001 10:54 AM ET
reuters.com
Reuters Photo
By Mark Chisholm and Rosalind Russell
BAGRAM/JABAL-US-SARAJ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghan opposition forces advanced toward Kabul Monday in a fierce assault on the Taliban front line backed by U.S. bombers and a relentless artillery barrage, and dozens of Taliban vehicles were seen racing out of the beleaguered capital.
"Our troops are knocking at the doors of Kabul. They are waiting to enter Kabul," Northern Alliance spokesman Ashraf Nadeem told Reuters by satellite phone from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.
Buoyed by the lightning capture in just 72 hours of about 40 percent of the country, the Northern Alliance was poised to march on the Afghan capital despite the entrenched Taliban positions arrayed between them and their ultimate prize and U.S. pleas not to enter the city for fear of further bloodshed. H Reuters correspondents at the front line said the opposition advanced three to five km (two to three miles) toward Kabul in some places.
The assault was the first attempt to take the Taliban front line near Bagram airport some 15 miles north of Kabul after 37 days of blistering U.S. air strikes to punish the Taliban for harboring Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
As darkness fell in Kabul, witnesses saw dozens of Taliban vehicles, including armored personnel carriers, leaving the capital on the main highway leading westwards and then south toward the militia's stronghold of Kandahar.
For the first time the intelligence department was in darkness. A spotlight at its door that is lit from dusk to dawn had been switched off. The house of the chief justice was also in darkness and his guard was not in his kiosk outside.
FULL INFANTRY ATTACK
A full infantry attack was mounted on the Taliban front line, backed by Northern Alliance tanks and mortars.
One mortar hit a tree and ripped off the foot of a Northern Alliance fighter, who was carried from the battlefield.
U.S. soldiers were also seen in positions near the front lines, apparently helping to coordinate the attacks.
"We have advanced five kilometers from Bagram airport," top commander, General Baba Jan, told Reuters, breaking off briefly from directing his troops. His bodyguard said 1,300 Taliban fighters at a village overlooking the airbase had surrendered, and many others had been killed.
In the distance, Taliban fighters, distinguished by their mandatory black turbans, could be seen fleeing in trucks and pick-ups as U.S. F-18 jets swooped down and opened fire on them.
"We have started to advance on the front line with soldiers and artillery. We have captured three or four Taliban posts," senior commander Amonolo Gozar told Reuters from the front line.
At the front beyond the village of Rabat, opposition and Taliban fighters exchanged heavy small arms and machine-gun fire at close quarters for two hours before a group of Taliban fired rocket-propelled grenades into the air -- a sign of surrender. Two pick-up trucks of Taliban prisoners were driven away.
Overhead huge B-52 bombers repeatedly bombarded the Ghlay Nasro frontline trench positions of the Taliban.
Thousands of opposition reinforcements as well as dozens of tanks and artillery pieces were pouring toward the frontline from positions in the Panjsher valley, witnesses said.
OPPOSITION SAYS TAKES HERAT The Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front, said the forces of veteran opposition commander Ismail Khan had taken the western city of Herat and were marching toward Kandahar, power base of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
"Moments before, I spoke to Ismail Khan on the phone and he said his commanders had reported the whole of Herat has fallen to forces of the United Front," spokesman Ashraf Nadeem told Reuters.
He said the opposition also hoped to take Kunduz, the last Taliban held city in the north, during the night.
But the Taliban said it was still in control of Herat and was launching a counter-attack in other parts of the country.
Taliban Foreign Ministry official Aziz Al-Rahman Abdul Ahad told the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite channel that the Taliban retreat from some areas was a deliberate strategy.
"Regarding the Taliban's withdrawal from all these cities and especially the northern areas, it was definitely a wise and practical tactic," he said. "They were not defeated ... it was a tactical measure."
Near the central town of Bamiyan, where the Taliban provoked international outrage by dynamiting ancient Buddhist statues in March, the opposition said they were making more gains.
Opposition commander Ahmad Bahram of the Shi'ite forces in the center of the country said the whole of central Bamiyan province was now in opposition hands after many Taliban deaths.
"There have been very many casualties, and their bodies are just lying on the roads," Bahram told Reuters.
The competing claims of the two sides could not be independently verified.
CONTROVERSY OVER KABUL
Washington says it does not want the Northern Alliance to enter Kabul, where many loathe the opposition for their internecine squabbles of the 1990s which unleashed savage rocket attacks on the city and killed some 50,000 residents.
The United States says it wants agreement on the structure of a broad-based post-Taliban government before opposition forces move into the capital. But there has been no visible sign of progress on forming a credible alternative to the Taliban that would be ready to take power if the militia is driven out.
But Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah says the opposition may move in if there is a power vacuum.
Abdullah said the defeat in the north had robbed the Taliban of about one-third of their fighting force.
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.
He said many Taliban fighters trapped in the north would find it impossible to escape -- they face the choice of trying to flee south through hostile territory and with U.S. war planes picking them off from the sky, or trying to get through the deadly chill of the Hindu Kush mountains, virtually impassable in winter.
The opposition has yet to try to take on the Taliban in their ethnic Pashtun strongholds in the south.
But tribal leader Hamid Karzai, on a mission to central and south Afghanistan to try to persuade local chieftains to back the return of former monarch Zahir Shah as head of a new government, said many in the south were ready to abandon the Taliban.
"We are not planning any military action here. I hope we can resolve this without war," Karzai told Reuters. "The civilian population is with us." |
