Taliban forces retreat from Kabul

Original publication date: Monday, November 12, 2001

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan – The Taliban’s military forces appeared to be in retreat from the Kabul at dawn today, after opposition forces broke through their front lines and reached the gates of Afghanistan’s capital.

Small-arms fire still sounded in the hills outside the city, but Taliban soldiers had abruptly vanished from the streets and witnesses reported that Taliban vehicles began heading south Monday night.

The rebel Northern Alliance forces began moving unopposed into the city in pickup trucks loaded with soldiers armed with rifles and rocket launchers, despite earlier warnings by the United States and Pakistan that they should stop short of seizing Kabul.

There have been concerns that this could lead to atrocities and the U.S. wants to avoid a repeat of past carnage that has reduced one-third of the capital to rubble.

At the United Nations efforts were under way Monday to make arrangements for an acceptable, multi-ethnic transitional administration. The United States, Russia and the six nations bordering Afghanistan pledged "to establish a broad-based Afghan administration on an urgent basis."

The fall of Kabul capped a stunning turnaround in the war, which begain Friday with the taking of the strategically critical city Mazar-e-Sharif in the north by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.

Despite the concerns about atrocities, the Bush administration appeared to applaud the signs that the Taliban were evacuating Kabul, although one U.S. official cautioned that the pullout was "far from complete."

"I think it is great news. It means the initial phase of the campaign is going well," U.S. army secretary Thomas White said on CNN’s Larry King Live.

He attributed the Taliban retreat to "a combination of well-targeted air power along with movement on the ground by Northern Alliance forces."

Witnesses reported that before they left, the Taliban took with them eight foreign aid workers accused of spreading Christianity in the Muslim nation.

In another development, U.S. defence officials said they planned to base U.S. aircraft in the bordering country of Tajikistan.

After claiming what amounted to a clean sweep of northern Afghanistan on Monday, hundreds of Northern Alliance fighters reportedly chanted "God is Great!" as they moved toward the Afghani capital from the north, supported by an intense artillery barrage, while roaring U.S. B-52 bombers hammered Taliban positions from overhead.

Alliance officials reportedly said the attack marked the start of an offensive on Kabul, after they claimed to have taken the northwestern city of Herat and appeared to have broken the Taliban’s grip on its last major northern holdout of Kunduz. The reports could not be independently confirmed, but developments clearly mark a dramatic turning point in the U.S.-led war on terrorism.

When the U.S. bombing campaign began Oct. 7, the Alliance controlled only one-tenth of the country. Now it appears to have close to 50 per cent.

The U.S. bombardment, entering its 38th day today, is trying to force Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers into surrendering terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

"We have started to advance on the front line with soldiers and artillery. We have captured three or four Taliban posts," Alliance commander Amonolo Gozar told Reuters News Agency by radio from the front line north of Kabul.

Other reports said 31 Taliban prisoners were taken in an assault on Bagram air base, 25 kilometres north of Kabul. The Alliance did not claim it had secured the base.

News photographers also captured images of western soldiers with Alliance fighters on the Kabul front lines. It was not known whether they were U.S. Special Forces officers, who have been calling in air strikes, or British troops who are also on the ground assisting Afghanistan’s rebel fighters.

The Alliance had said it would halt its advance at Kabul’s gates until a political consensus on Afghanistan’s future government could be reached between the country’s various ethnic groups. "The military priority is to clear the Taliban from the north," said Mohammed Hasham Saad, the Alliance ambassador to Uzbekistan. "Secondly, we want to make it safe for our forces to use military airports like Bagram.

"The future political structure is not for us (to decide). Others will decide."

Haron Amin, a Washington-based envoy for the northern alliance, had said Monday that the opposition forces would try to surround Kabul to prevent the Taliban from reinforcing or resupplying troops inside.

"We have no intention of going into Kabul," he said, adding that the United Nations must first come up with a plan for dividing power in Afghanistan after the Taliban falls.

The Kabul offensive on Kabul comes after the dramatic Alliance breakthrough in the north that started Friday with the capture of the key city of Mazar-e-Sharif. The momentum, spurred by local uprisings and Taliban defections, carried the Alliance through several provinces, giving them victories in several strategic cities and town.

The Alliance gains extended to Pul-e-Khumri, 170 kilometres southeast of Mazar-e-Sharif in Baghlan province, through which the main highway to Kabul passes. The fall of the Samangan province city of Aybak also cuts off the Taliban escape route south to Kabul.

On Monday, the Alliance said they captured Herat, the largest city in northwestern Afghanistan near the Iranian border. The fall of Herat would give the Alliance access to the main road leading to the Taliban spiritual stronghold of Kandahar in the south. It could also allow humanitarian groups access to 150,000 internally displaced Afghanis crammed into one of the most squalid camps in the country.

"It was very harsh conditions," said David Eastman, 28, an aid worker who was evacuated from Herat after a six-week stint at the Maclakh refugee camp, three days after the September terrorist attacks on the U.S.

He described Maclakh as "five kilometres of people with no water, food, shelter or medicine."

Whatever aid manages to reach Herat as the Afghan winter looms might not be enough to prevent further deaths, but it will certainly be welcome, he said.

"At the time of the evacuation, it was already too late for the winter," said Eastman.

Saad said Herat is one of the most impoverished regions of Afghanistan.

"We hope that after capturing all the northern provinces people will return to their houses," said Saad. "If they are destroyed we hope the NGOs will help rebuild houses. We will help them too."

Barges carrying humanitarian aid are to begin crossing the Amu Darya River at Termez on Wednesday, the border between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. The border has been closed for four years, however the main land bridge between the two countries has yet to open because the extent of the Alliance victory is being assessed by nervous Uzbek officials. Mazar-e-Sharif is just 60 kilometres south of the Uzbek border.

The United Nations said Monday some of its warehouses in Mazar-e-Sharif had been looted after the Alliance won control of the city Friday.

"There are unconfirmed reports speaking of violence and summary executions," UN spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker told a press conference in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Forces under the command of ethnic Uzbek commander Rashid Dostum led Friday’s march on Mazar. The city has witnessed reprisal killings from both sides in the past.

Dostum massacred thousands of Taliban fighters in 1997. The Taliban responded with its own massacre a year later when it seized control of the city.

Saad said the Alliance commanders have been cautioned against reprisal killings.

"We observe all the norms and provisions of the UN and the international community," he said.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said Kunduz, a Taliban holdout in the northeast, had also fallen to the Alliance after a six-hour battle. Dostum reportedly led that offensive as well, in what would have been a tough fight. The Taliban did not concede the loss of Kunduz.

The population of Kunduz is mainly Pashtun, the same ethnic group that dominates the Taliban.

The fall of Kunduz, which borders the former Soviet republic of Tajikistan, would widen Alliance supply routes from Russia, their chief supplier of military hardware.