Some Taliban Ready to Sell Out Bin Laden
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Some Taliban members are hinting they may cut a deal to turn over Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), sources tell ABCNEWS. Meanwhile, the U.S. military is crafting a new strategy to get at Taliban forces, who have retreated from key cities taken by Northern Alliance fighters.
Taliban forces found themselves confined to the southern part of Afghanistan (news - web sites) today as some members of the militia tried to cut deals to turn over Osama bin Laden and his top leaders, sources told ABCNEWS.
Anti-Taliban forces gained control of the important eastern city of Jalalabad today as reports surfaced of fighting in the streets of Kandahar — the Taliban's birthplace.
In a further boost to the U.S.-led coalition, eight foreign aid workers held by the Taliban since August for preaching Christianity were freed today. Two of the eight are Americans. See Story.
The Taliban militia has withdrawn from as much as 70 percent of territory it formerly occupied. But as Taliban forces retreat, some are coming foreward with information about bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
Sources told ABCNEWS that some of the Taliban appear to be responding to long-standing offers of rewards, while others are looking for favorable treatment for their troops, who are trapped in various parts of the country. American officials are directly involved in these conversations, sources said.
Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem confirmed there was some tension between the Taliban and al Qaeda, bin Laden's organization. "We have seen reports, as they try to communicate one to another and in some cases Taliban amongst themselves that not ... every objective they wish to accomplish is going to be supported," he said today.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, visiting the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York, hinted there was new progress in the hunt for bin Laden.
"Interrogations that have been held, the intelligence that's been gathered — I think that every day we have a better chance of achieving our goals," he said.
New Strategies in Progress
Rumsfeld said that U.S. special operations troops in southern Afghanistan were now carrying out what he called "interdictions."
Officials told ABCNEWS these troops, for the first time, are setting up roadblocks on mountain highways and ambushing suspicious convoys, trying to rattle bin Laden operatives in the area.
U.S. intelligence sources said bin Laden and his inner circle have left the mountain caves where they were believed to be hiding and are now on the move, amid the Taliban's loss of nearly all of Afghanistan's major cities.
The interdictions are part of a shift in U.S. strategy as most of the hard-line Islamic militia and its al Qaeda allies have dispersed into the remote country of southwestern Afghanistan, making it harder for American air power to target them, Stufflebeem said.
"Where we can positively identify Taliban as such, we are pursuing them," he said. "It's difficult in the southern part of Afghanistan, west of Kandahar, to be able to positively identify what may be southern Pashtun tribes vs. Taliban troops that may be on the move."
With the Taliban having fled south, American officials have been appealing for help from local leaders unaffiliated with the opposition Northern Alliance.
As many as 23 Pashtun tribes in the south appeared to have risen up against the Taliban, although it was unclear if they were responding to U.S. appeals or taking advantage of the power vacuum.
"Whether or not they're working in concert, we don't know," Stufflebeem said.
He also said, "The U.S. is prepared if necessary to conduct a guerrilla war or a counter-guerrilla war."
Some plans continued unchanged though. Stufflebeem said the U.S. military would continue with plans to set up air bases both inside Afghanistan and outside it.
Despite reports of uprisings in Kandahar, home to the Taliban's reclusive spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, and the loss of the strategic Afghan city of Jalalabad, located near the famed Khyber Pass, Stufflebeem told reporters, "We don't assume that the job is nearly over with."
Taliban officials also insist they have not undergone a total collapse. "It was a strategic and tactical withdrawal from all these provinces," said Sohail Shaheen, the Taliban's deputy ambassador in Pakistan.
A Government (Still) in Limbo
In less than a week, Taliban control of the nation has plunged from 95 percent to just around 20 percent, the Northern Alliance said.
Caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban retreat, the international community has been frantically attempting to fill the potentially dangerous power vacuum in Afghanistan, despite assurances from the Northern Alliance of its eagerness to cooperate with a potential transitional coalition of multi-ethnic groups.
U.N. officials are meeting with representatives of Afghan groups and the "six-plus-two" nations, a loose alliance of Afghanistan's six neighbors plus Russia and the United States, to patch together a transitional government in Kabul.
In a 15-0 vote, the U.N. Security Council endorsed a British- and French-drafted resolution supporting U.N.special envoy for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi's plan for a two-year transitional government to bring Afghanistan's ethnic groups under one umbrella and for the establishment of a multinational security force to guard them.
In other developments:
In a 23-page document released to Parliament today, Britain unveiled what it said was further evidence that bin Laden masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
The latest numbers of victims from the attacks on the World Trade Center, according to New York City officials, are 3,748 missing presumed dead and 556 identified dead. In addition, officials say 233 people are dead or missing at other Sept. 11 terrorism sites, for a total of 4,537 presumed dead in the attacks. |
