KABUL/KHANABAD, 24 November — Confusion continues to shroud surrender talks for some 15,000 Taleban fighters — including thousands of Pakistani, Arab and Chechen volunteers linked to Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network — who are mounting a bitter defense in Kunduz in the north of Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance says it has suspended an assault on the besieged city launched Thursday evening to give the Taleban yet another opportunity to surrender. However, it threatens that it will resume the attack if no deal emerges by Saturday afternoon. This confusion, according to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP), is largely the result of splits among Northern Alliance forces.
A Taleban spokesman in Kunduz itself was quoted as saying the militia had reached surrender terms with Abdul Rashid Dostum, but forces loyal to ousted President Burhanuddin Rabbani — a Tajik who nominally heads the Alliance — were unhappy with the deal and so launched several independent attacks.
Factional infighting is the one political constant in Afghanistan, where alliances among its kaleidoscope of ethnic, tribal and religious groups are in perpetual motion. Dostum himself has often shifted sides down the years. A militia leader with a reputation for brutality and lavish living, he also staged an unsuccessful revolt against then President Rabbani in 1994.
US warplanes kept up their aerial barrage yesterday despite all these developments, bombing Taleban targets around Kunduz. Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said he hoped negotiations with the fighters in Kunduz, the Taleban’s last northern bastion, would work, but the attack would go on if no deal materialized.
"We have given them more time, until tomorrow afternoon. Otherwise, if there isn’t a result after these negotiations, the fighting will resume," he said.
And in the south, in a sign of mounting pressure, a Taleban official said their supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had fled his stronghold in the city of Kandahar for a more secure hideaway, leaving a deputy in his place. "Mullah Omar has shifted to an unknown place for security reasons," Mullah Sayed Muhammad Haqqani, a Taleban security official in charge at the border town of Spin Boldak, near Pakistan, said.
But the AIP later quoted Mullah Omar’s spokesman as saying the report was false.
Hundreds more Taleban fighters gave themselves up yesterday. Qanuni said that "500 to 600 Taleban have surrendered" in the area since the Northern Alliance push started Thursday. Three hundred were said to have given up around the city of Khanabad (east of Kunduz) alone.
Sadreddine, a Northern Alliance commander, said that "we have chased the Taleban from the hills" dominating Khanabad, encircled by Alliance forces about 20 km (12 miles).
"We suspended our offensive Thursday evening to allow all our people (Afghan Taleban) who want to give up to do so and come fight with us against foreign Taleban," Sadreddine said.
A Taleban spokesman was quoted as saying dozens of people were killed and injured in the heavy US bombardment on the outskirts of Kunduz.
The US planes targeted Taleban front lines and civilian areas in eastern and northeastern areas of Kunduz province, the spokesman told AIP by satellite phone. "Civilians in the Khanabad (east of Kunduz) area are in a bad condition due to bombardment and fighting. Children, women and men are rushing toward Kunduz," he said.
UN-sponsored talks on the future of the country, due to begin on Monday in Bonn, will now open Tuesday, after a day of closed meetings among the various Afghan factions. The formal opening of the talks was delayed primarily for logistic reasons, Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy for Afghanistan, said. "We want to allow people enough time to arrive," he said. The delay also would allow the 20 to 30 Afghan representatives expected to attend to confer among themselves and with representatives of the United Nations before the formal opening of the conference.
Fears grew Kunduz could become a bloodbath if the surrender talks foundered or if the thousands of Al-Qaeda troops fought to the death to avoid the risk of summary justice. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf expressed serious concern at a meeting in Islamabad about the fate of the Kunduz defenders.
"We’re working hard to see if it’s possible to avoid a massacre," Straw told reporters on his aircraft as he flew back to London. "It means getting a much clearer assessment of the situation and finding out if it is possible to get a surrender."
Foreign fighters’ fears of retribution will not have been allayed by the International Committee of the Red Cross report, which said up to 600 bodies had been found in the city of Mazar-e-Sharif after its capture two weeks ago by the Alliance.
According to Russian media reports, Khattab, who has been one of the most feared field commanders of the Chechen war, is among the fighters in Kunduz. RTR television quoted "unofficial sources" in the Afghan capital Kabul as saying he arrived in Kunduz yesterday to help its defenders. He had left Chechnya three days earlier and flown from Azerbaijan to Pakistan, then crossed the Afghan border, it claimed.
