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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (41400)	11/2/2001 11:15:44 AM
From: BubbaFred	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50167

B-52's Slam Kabul Front Lines, Cheering Opposition to Taliban nytimes.com November 2, 2001 By TERENCE NEILAN American B-52's attacked Taliban front lines north of Kabul today in what witnesses described as some of the heaviest attacks of the campaign and opposition fighters hailed as highly effective. Strong attacks were also reported today against Taliban positions around the strategic northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. An opposition official, Nadeem Ashraf, called the daylong attacks "relentless" despite overcast skies and heavy rains. "These attacks are spot on!" an opposition commander watching the Kabul raids from the roof of his house in the town of Rabat told Reuters. He said he saw flames and smoke rise from positions used by the Taliban to shell the Northern Alliance opposition at the Bagram airbase, about 35 miles north of the capital. "The bombardment was very effective," an opposition spokesman, Waisuddin Salik, told The Associated Press. Elated opposition fighters and villagers in Jabal Saraj told the A.P. that as many as 60 bombs fell, but lost track as huge explosions sent smoke surging up from Taliban positions. "There are too many to count!" said a 20-year-old opposition fighter, Sham Sher Khan. This afternoon local time, fighters told the A.P. they counted six runs by B-52's, with each dropping 25 bombs on suspected Taliban positions defending Kabul. They appeared to be targeting positions both on the front line, including the Taliban-held village of Kharabogh, and deeper inside Taliban-held territory, the agency said. One huge bomb blasted the abandoned Qara Muheb village, which opposition forces said the Taliban used as a field command center. An opposition spokesman in Parwan Province, 35 miles north of Kabul, said today's assault was the heaviest in the area since the air campaign began Oct. 7. He said a preliminary opposition estimate showed that 13 Taliban tanks had been destroyed along with several types of guns including heavy machine-guns and antiaircraft weapons, the A.P. said. The report could not be independently confirmed, and Taliban spokesmen in Kabul were not available for comment. Opposition officials were quoted as saying that the bombings near Kabul seemed to be directed by American forces on the ground. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld confirmed Wednesday that a small number of American Special Forces were on the ground helping with targeting and other tasks. On Thursday Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials said more troops were poised to enter Afghanistan but had been held up by fog and sandstorms and Taliban ground fire. Other attacks were reported overnight at Kandahar, the Taliban political and spiritual base. Washington has pressed the effort to promote a broad-based alliance opposed to the Taliban incorporating the Northern Alliance, the majority Pashtun ethnic group, from which the Taliban draws its support, and other ethnic group. An effort by the veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviets in the 1980's, Abdul Haq, failed this week when he was captured and executed by the Taliban after he entered Afghanistan from exile in Pakistan in attempt to rally Pashtun in the south against the Taliban. Today the Pakistani-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that a similar attempt to rally a rebellion had failed when 25 followers of the tribal leader Hamid Karzai, a supporter of the former King Zahir Shah, had been captured and that the Taliban intended to execute some of them. A Taliban minister in Kabul, quoted by the agency, said the Taliban attacked Mr. Karzai's camp on Thursday, forcing him to flee in a battle that killed two of his followers. Mr. Karzai's brother, Ahmed, said he had spoken to him in Afghanistan and challenged the agency account. `'This is all lies, it is not true," he told Reuters in the southwest Pakisani city of Quetta. Unlike the Northern Alliance, which has the backing of the American military, Mr. Karzai has some diplomatic support but no material support from the United States. The United States has had trouble forging a cohesive anti-Taliban alliance in the south among the Pashtun. A former deputy former minister in an Afghan government in the early 1990's, Mr. Karzai is respected by American officials and is considered less unpredictable and more strategically wise than was Mr. Haq. Mr. Karzai, who was educated in India, has argued that in order to demolish the Taliban, their fighters have to be presented with a credible alternative. A leader of the Populzai ethnic group in Afghanistan, a subgroup of the Pashtun, Mr. Karzai has the potential to wield significant power in Afghanistan. His strength is in his ancestral lands, which coincide with much of those of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban.