U.S. Troops Hunt Bin Laden, Scores Bombing Hits
November 15, 2001 12:06 PM ET
By Alan Elsner and Sayed Salahuddin
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - U.S. special forces hunted for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan on Thursday, as 20,000 of his Arab supporters and Taliban protectors were surrounded in the northern city of Kunduz, facing the prospect of a fight to the death.
Many were reported to be Arab followers of bin Laden who feared they would be killed if they surrendered to the Northern Alliance troops that had cut them off in the city.
"There are 20,000 Taliban in Kunduz, many of them Arabs, and they are trying to break out," said one Northern Alliance official in Dushanbe, the capital of neighboring Tajikistan.
"They are desperate, they've seen what happens to Arabs when the Northern Alliance gets hold of them," he said.
Many foreigners -- including Pakistanis, Chechens and Arabs, spent years fighting for the Taliban under the umbrella of bin Laden's al Qaeda network. They are widely hated by many Afghans.
General Mahommed Dawood, the Northern Alliance commander in the nearby city of Taloqan, told reporters his group had contacted the mayor of Kunduz, who asked for two more days to negotiate before Alliance fighters attacked the city, which was also being bombarded by U.S. warplanes.
The Pentagon said U.S. warplanes killed some al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in two bombing raids on houses in Kabul and Kandahar this week, launched on the basis of intelligence information. But bin Laden was still thought to be alive.
The United States and its allies blame Saudi-born bin Laden for the Sept. 11 hijack attacks on New York and Washington that killed around 4,600 people. It vowed to topple the Taliban after the hard-line Muslim militia rejected a U.S. ultimatum to hand over bin Laden and his cohorts.
President Bush achieved one of his war objectives when eight foreign detainees, who had been held by Taliban for allegedly preaching Christianity to Afghans, were safely rescued and brought to Pakistan. Two were U.S. citizens.
MULLAH OMAR DEFIANT
Mullah Omar, the reclusive Taliban leader, breathed defiance despite 40 days of withering air strikes.
"The situation in Afghanistan is part of a big plan including the destruction of the United States," Mullah Omar told the BBC Pashtun service.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press quoted Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdullah as saying bin Laden, "has already decided that death will be preferable to being arrested by America."
Pakistan moved troops and tanks to its southwest border with Afghanistan in a swift response to reports bin Laden could try to sneak across the border.
In a move to bolster its ally in the U.S.-led war against terrorism, Washington formally agreed on Thursday to give Pakistan $600 million in aid.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States was sticking to its goals of dismantling al Qaeda and other international terrorist networks and ensuring that weapons of mass destruction did not fall into their hands.
Reports from the Kandahar area and from U.S. officials spoke of anti-Taliban revolts there, and fighting in the city itself. A group of tribal leaders from southern Afghanistan was trying to negotiate some kind of arrangement to avoid bloodshed and warned the Northern Alliance not to try to take the city.
As a small number of U.S. special forces troops operated in southern Afghanistan, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said American warplanes conducted a blistering 136 sorties against Taliban and al Qaeda targets on Wednesday.
Despite reports that the United States might sharply reduce such air strikes during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which begins this weekend, Clarke said the raids would go on.
She said the United States was receiving more intelligence, based partly on a $25 million reward for bin Laden.
U.S. ENVOY IN TALKS
The U.S. envoy for Afghanistan began talks with Pakistani officials to help push forward urgent international efforts to build a broad-based government in Afghanistan and fill a power vacuum in Kabul.
Ambassador James Dobbins, who arrived in Islamabad on Wednesday night, met Pakistani Foreign Secretary Inamul Haq, at the start of a multi-country tour to help to cobble together a broad-based government for Afghanistan.
Francesc Vendrell, the United Nation's deputy ambassador to Afghanistan, said on Thursday he would travel soon to Kabul to meet leaders of the Northern Alliance and invite them to a U.N. conference on the country's future.
France said it would send troops to Afghanistan to participate in an international aid mission there in coming days to ensure safe passage of aid and aid convoys.
Myers said aid would soon start pouring in from Uzbekistan in large quantities.
"This is exactly the right time of year to get supplies in there, to help those that don't have the food or the clothing or the blankets to make it through the winter," he told a national security conference in Washington.
Tribal leader Hamid Karzai, inside Afghanistan drumming up support for the return of ex-King Zahir Shah, told Reuters the people of Kandahar had revolted against the Taliban.
"The people have totally risen against them," Karzai said by satellite telephone from the central province of Uruzgan.
"The Kandahar people have taken to the city streets. The Taliban are withdrawing heavy equipment out of Kandahar."
There was no independent confirmation but nongovernmental organizations spoke of reports of hundreds of Afghan families fleeing toward Pakistan because of fighting in the area.
U.S. special forces, who have been on the ground for several weeks, whisked eight foreign aid workers out of Afghanistan, ending an ordeal that began when the Taliban accused them of spreading Christianity -- an offense punishable by death.
MIRACLE RESCUE
"It was like a miracle," Georg Taubmann, one of the eight, told reporters in Pakistan where they were taken by helicopter.
The eight -- four Germans, two Americans and two Australians working for the German-based Shelter Now International charity -- had spent more than three months in detention.
U.S. officials said Washington was prepared to send troops into the southern caves and mountains in a guerrilla campaign to ferret out bin Laden.
Vice President Dick Cheney said bin Laden, who has a $5 million price on his head, had fewer and fewer options.
"The circumstances on the ground have changed dramatically just in a matter of days, and areas that were probably safe for him 48 or 72 hours ago are no longer safe for him," he told CBS television.
Mullah Omar, quoted by a spokesman interviewed by the BBC, said his forces would regroup and fight on.
"The Taliban might have committed some mistakes but it is a big development for them to regroup and reorganize" he said, adding that four to five of Afghanistan's 29 provinces were still in Taliban hands.
The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday unanimously endorsed an Afghan political plan envisaging a two-year interim government bringing all ethnic groups under one umbrella with a multinational security force to protect them.
Spokesmen for the Northern Alliance said it had no desire to cling to power but that it would run Kabul until a broad-based post-Taliban government was formed.
Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, said it was ready to join the peacekeeping mission, which diplomats say could include troops from France, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Turkey, Bangladesh and Jordan.
The Northern Alliance is mainly made up of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks and is distrusted by the country's Pashtun majority, from whom the Taliban drew their support.
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