Kunduz ..The siege of Kunduz has descended into a bloodbath with Taliban choosing death over defeat, fearsome Arabs loyal to Osama bin Laden turning their guns on the frightened militia and US jets raining death from the skies. The United States sent wave after wave of warplanes, including giant B-52 bombers, to pound the last holdout of the Taliban in the north, and fighters of the Northern Alliance -- or United Front -- battered their frontlines with artillery fire, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday from the nearby northern town of Taloqan.
The anti-Taliban alliance that has surrounded the city has offered the thousands of Taliban fighters inside -- but not their foreign hardline brothers-in-arms -- the possibility of surrender. When some frightened Afghan Taliban tried to yield, they were killed by the fearsome Arabs, Pakistanis, Chechens and other foreign fighters associated with bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, the foreign ministry spokesman said from Taloqan. "We have heard that a group of local Taliban tried to surrender in Kunduz but they were killed by the foreign soldiers," the spokesman said, adding that the death toll was less than 150 as reported in some media.
The desperation of the beleaguered Taliban in Kunduz was reflected in an incident last week when six Arabs blew themselves up in front of the advancing Alliance forces at Dasht-i-Archi, near the Amu Darya river that marks the border with neighbouring Tajikistan. Many of the foreign fighters in Afghanistan have chosen to fight to the death, knowing that they face revenge at the hands of Afghans who hate them, and because they have no safe haven to which to flee -- unlike the Taliban who can just melt into the mountains and go home.
Several hundred people have been killed in Kunduz by US bombing raids in the last few days, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said. It said no exact estimate of the number of deaths was possible. The Taliban, routed from most of the country in just a week, have holed up in Kunduz and Kandahar, determined to fight it out. "The American planes bombed the Taliban frontline from this morning, for the whole day," the spokesman said. "There was also some exchange of artillery fire on the ground, but there has been no movement of the frontline today," he said.
Repeated efforts to persuade the Taliban, backed by Pakistani and Arab fighters, to surrender have failed since the capital fell to the Alliance on Tuesday. By late on Sunday the patience of Sher Allam, the Alliance's overall commander in the area, was wearing thin. "We have given them enough chances to surrender, but they haven't listened so far," Allam told Reuters. "We want this to be resolved peacefully and if they don't surrender then we will have to start our attack," he said.
Alliance officials spoke by radio and satellite phone with the local Taliban forces led by Ghulam Muhammad. But Allam said the Taliban fighters were under pressure from Arab Islamists in their ranks not to surrender. Some living below the Taliban positions were preparing to flee, fearing fighting was imminent. Under the fluid rules of war in Afghanistan, local commanders can often be persuaded to surrender or swap sides. But that option is not open to the widely despised Arab, Pakistani, Chechen and other foreign fighters.
Taliban leaders in Kunduz have agreed to surrender control of the besieged city in northern Afghanistan to the United Nations, CNN quoted tribal elders as saying Sunday. The move follows a meeting in Kunduz between the six elders, the Taliban commander of Afghanistan's northern zone, Mullah Dadullah, and the pro-Taliban Kunduz governor Haji Omar Khan. The elders then travelled to Peshawar, Pakistan and briefed reporters on Sunday on the outcome of the meeting.
The development follows reports from Kunduz, currently surrounded by 30,000 Northern Alliance troops, that Taliban fighters were committing suicides rather than giving up. CNN was also told that Taliban fighters were killing local Taliban who wanted to surrender. Dadullah and Khan agreed to surrender their heavy weapons and all foreign fighters to the UN and said they were willing to let the international body appoint a neutral caretaker and neutral governor for Kunduz.
The UN has not responded to the offer. Following their surrender, the two men said they now support the Loya Jirga and the former Afghan king Zahir Shah, who has pledged to help construct a post-Taliban Afghan government. Dadullah and Khan insisted that they would not surrender to the Northern Alliance because they said the alliance has no respect for human rights, property and honor. They said the Taliban would continue to fight if the Northern Alliance enters the city.
The Northern Alliance had attempted to engineer a Taliban surrender, promising the Taliban troops -- which include Chechen, Pakistani and Arab fighters -- safe passage from Kunduz if they gave up their weapons. Sources inside the city told CNN that some 60 Chechen fighters in Kunduz drowned themselves in the Amu River rather than give up. A Northern Alliance commander told CNN of 25 trapped Taliban fighters who fatally shot one another when they saw opposition troops advancing towards them. The Kunduz mayor had expressed concern over civilian casualties, asking the Northern Alliance not to launch a full-scale offensive on the city but to try to persuade more Taliban to defect.
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