BANGI BRIDGE, Afghanistan, 25 November — Led by a tank, they came across the front line yesterday in rusting Russian trucks and broken-down jeeps on two ropes, the Taleban in retreat. But they did not look like a beaten army. They waved their Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers in the air, and joked and smiled with us.

The siege of Kunduz, the Taleban’s last stronghold in the north, appeared close to ending last night as 2,000 Taleban troops streamed out of the city to surrender. The Northern Alliance said its troops would enter the city today to accept its formal surrender.

Among the troops giving themselves up yesterday, the Alliance claimed, were some of the foreign Taleban volunteers who have been trapped inside Kunduz. Six hundred surrendered according to some reports.

But there are still fears of potential bloodshed. There were unconfirmed reports last night that some foreign fighters were still inside the city, vowing to fight to the death. And the fate of those foreigners who surrender or are captured by the Northern Alliance is far from certain.

For the Afghans, it was all too easy. "Oh no, I’m not with the Taleban," one of the surrendering soldiers told us with a sly smile. "I’m with the Northern Alliance." Abdul Bashir had just left the besieged city where he had been holed up alongside thousands of foreign volunteers fighting on his side. "If we are asked to go and fight against the foreigners, we will," he said. Many of the surrendering Taleban hanging on to the tops of Russian trucks had already swapped their black turbans for the Alliance’s pakoul caps, before they even crossed the front line.

This is how wars are won and lost in Afghanistan, through defections and changing sides, not through pitched battles. The Afghan Taleban we saw surrendering east of Kunduz were allowed to keep their guns, and drive into the nearby Alliance-held city of Taloqan. But as far as Afghans are concerned, the Taleban are not the enemy any more, the foreigners are. Few foreign fighters were expected to surrender. Under the terms of a peace deal agreed by Gen. Dostum and Mullah Muhammad Fazil, leader of the Taleban forces in Kunduz, Afghan Taleban who surrender will be guaranteed safe passage home. But the foreigners will be taken prisoner.

There were signs of a growing split between Gen. Dostum and the rest of the Northern Alliance as an Alliance leader accused Gen. Dostum of allowing the foreigners to leave. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, has said he would rather they were killed than be allowed to escape. But Gen. Dostum and his allies said the surrendering foreign fighters were being held. "We will jail them, and treat them as human beings, in accordance with Islamic Shariah law," Muhammad Muhakik, the leader of the Hazara faction fighting alongside Gen. Dostum, said. "If there are requests from the US or the UN or their home countries, we will hand them over," he said.

Many fear their fate could be worse. Alliance soldiers have been boasting of how they will kill the foreigners. There was no word on what had become of the thousands of other foreigners the Alliance claimed were in Kunduz, around 1,000 of them allegedly members of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network.

Pakistan’s ruler, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has been begging for a solution that will prevent the slaughter of Pakistani nationals believed to be trapped inside Kunduz. There are continuing allegations that Pakistani military jets have been landing at Kunduz airport and ferrying Pakistani nationals out of the besieged city. It has been alleged they could be rescuing Pakistani military advisers to the Taleban. Refugees fleeing Kunduz have confirmed that planes have been landing in Kunduz.

A surrendering Taleban soldier blew himself up with a hand grenade in a suicide attack which seriously injured a Northern Alliance commander and killed two other fighters near Mazar-e-Sharif, British news network ITV said.

The incident, which happened as Alliance forces searched about 500 foreign Taleban fighters outside Mazar-e-Sharif, was reported by Andrea Catherwood, a British ITV journalist who herself received a shrapnel wound to the knee. Catherwood said the Taleban, mostly from Pakistan, had driven overnight across the desert from Kunduz to surrender.

"They were met by Gen. Dostum in the desert, they were disarmed, or so we thought. A lot of heavy arms were taken away in a truck." The 500 were taken to Dostum’s headquarters, a fort, and were searched, Catherwood said.

"One of these foreign fighters pulled the pin in a grenade, he blew himself up, he killed the two former fighters beside him, and he also seriously injured one of the Northern Alliance commanders," who was not named.

Catherwood added: "The Northern Alliance are not proper soldiers. They were not properly equipped to deal with this situation. They had the Taleban milling around this compound, and they really did not know quite what to do. They tried to get the Taleban to put their hands up, there was one shot fired, the situation was very volatile, and we left the situation behind, and got out of the compound."

Near the capital Kabul, fighting between a pocket of Taleban troops and two Northern Alliance groupings ceased after most of the Taleban switched sides. The Alliance had been seeking to persuade the Taleban to surrender Maidan Shahr since it captured Kabul on Nov. 13.

Soldiers on the Northern Alliance side of the front line said foreign fighters backing the Taleban had withdrawn from Maidan Shahr, 30 km (18 miles) west of the capital. The remaining Afghan Taleban laid down their arms and agreed to join Alliance fighters.

Commanders loyal to the Tajik and Uzbek-dominated Northern Alliance crossed the front line for talks with the Taleban troops. Around 500 Alliance troops later crossed over the line and soldiers said they were securing former Taleban positions. Three former Taleban armored personnel carriers crossed the front line and joined the Alliance troops.

The Arabic daily Al-Hayat reported yesterday that two Egyptian leaders of Al-Qaeda, Tareq Anwar and Nasr Fahmi, were killed recently in Afghanistan. Citing Hani Al-Sibai, an Egyptian Islamist living in London, Al-Hayat reported that Tareq Anwar, alias Muhammad Salah and Nasr Fahmi, alias Fathi, were recently killed along with members of their families in US raids on the town of Khost in Afghanistan.

Tareq Anwar and Nasr Fahmi are two leaders of the Egyptian organization Al-Jihad of Ayman Al-Zawahri, Osama Bin Laden’s right-hand man.

The two were condemned to death in Egypt in 1999 in the so-called "Returnees from Afghanistan" trial, and their names figure on the US list of targets of its anti-terrorist war published days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The deputy interior minister of the former Taleban government, Haji Mullah Khaksar, dissociated himself from the hard-line regime and pledged his support for peace while two of the main opposition leaders in southern Afghanistan said they do not expect to attend a UN conference next week on the country’s future political setup.

(The Independent)