WASHINGTON/ISLAMABAD, 28 October — In what has become an almost routine occurrence, Taleban forces once again repulsed an opposition offensive backed by US airstrikes yesterday as several thousand armed Pakistani tribesmen set out in a 100-truck convoy to cross into Afghanistan to help the Taleban militia. News that Pakistan’s Pashtun tribesmen, cousins of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, were rallying to the Taleban cause was another blow to US-backed attempts by Afghan exiles to set up a government to replace the regime.
But the US continues to do what it has done to little apparent effect thus far: bomb Kabul and Taleban positions defending the key northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. "The US jets bombed continuously and the opposition launched a heavy offensive but the morale of our forces is very high because they are fighting for God," said Abdul Hanan Hemat, the head of the Taleban information agency.
An opposition spokesman near the northern front in Samangan province confirmed by telephone that the offensive had been turned back. In morning and afternoon raids, US warplanes dropped up to 35 bombs on three main front-line areas: near Bagram air base 50 kilometers north of Kabul and at the mouth of the Kapisa valley some 30 kilometers further northeast.
Gen. Baba Jan, who commands Northern Alliance forces on the Bagram front, said the bombs near his sector "hit tanks, troops and the anti-aerial defense of the Taleban". Warplanes also hit the capital itself with a rapid succession of bombs. "It was one of the worst nights," said one Kabul resident, speaking on the 21st day of the US assault.
The Taleban, who have not disintegrated as predicted under the superpower onslaught, expect to receive help from several thousand armed Pakistani tribesmen who were trying to cross into northeastern Afghanistan in defiance of Islamabad.
Witnesses in Pakistan said that buses, wagons, pickup trucks and other vehicles with Muslim activists armed with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket launchers have now left for Afghanistan’s eastern Kunar province. Party officials said the group was led by firebrand Islamic party head Sufi Muhammad who has called for jihad, or a holy struggle, against the United States.
A Pakistani security official told Reuters from the Bajuar area bordering Afghanistan that the group of about 4,500 men had not crossed into Afghanistan yet, but had set up a camp for the night in a village 12 km short of the border. The official, who asked not to be identified, said the group planned to head toward the border today. The government may try to stop them.
Qazi Ehsanullah, spokesman for the Tehrik Nifaze Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) movement, told Reuters by telephone from the village of Maidan in Malakand district that Sufi Muhammad led the first convoy of Mujahedeen. "There were a lot of them which passed from here," said Hussain Ahmad, a resident of Timaragarh, a village two hours drive from the border.
Ahmad did not see any anti-aircraft guns but said people were armed with the popular Kalashnikov rifles. Residents in the tribal border areas normally carry weapons and frequently travel between the two countries through mountain paths and dirt roads.
The Islamabad government has only limited control of the tribal areas, established under British colonial rule.
Also yesterday, the Afghan Islamic Press reported that five opposition commanders were captured during the fighting and then hanged, but Taleban Education Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi dismissed the report as false.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan warned that his country could not cope with refugees fleeing the war. "If we open up the gates freely, we will have to be ready for another two million refugees, that is our prediction," Musharraf said.
"There will be social and economic problems. Do we want another two million refugees?"
UN refugee agency chief Ruud Lubbers arrived in Pakistan yesterday to examine the crisis, amid frantic efforts to prepare for the expected exodus. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Ron Redmond told reporters in the Pakistani city Quetta that 15 camps were ready to hold a total of 150,000 people. "The infrastructure is there, everything is pre-positioned and we are ready to go," he said.
The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million Afghans could be driven out by the conflict, and says tens of thousands have poured towards the Pakistani border since the US strikes began three weeks ago. Pakistan has come under pressure to allow the refugees in, but the nuclear power fears for its own stability as anger at the US bombing spreads among its own population.
On Friday, 50,000 hard-line Muslims protested in Karachi in the biggest display yet of anti-American anger since the strikes began. Pakistan also has the fear of germ warfare hanging over it. A doctor yesterday confirmed that he was treating the first confirmed case of anthrax linked to a germ-laden letter outside the United States.
The doctor, who works at the Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, said a worker at a branch of international financial institution which received a letter containing a suspected batch of anthrax was being treated, and would recover.
Back in the US, where three people have died and 11 more have been treated for anthrax infections, investigators said yesterday they still did not know who sent the letters. FBI and CIA investigators believe extremists in the United States, not connected to Osama Bin Laden, blamed by Washington for hijacked plane attacks on Sept. 11 which killed nearly 5,000 people, are probably behind the use of the postal system to deliver anthrax, the Washington Post reported yesterday.
In Pakistan, Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan military’s Inter-Services Intelligence, said that the death of opposition leader Abdul Haq — who was captured, tried and executed by the Taleban after being smuggled into Afghanistan to instigate a revolt against them — was a sign that Pashtun leaders were not ready to desert the regime. "The Taleban could not have arrested Haq without their support, it is not the Afghan tradition to capture a guest visiting tribal elders," he said.
"It proves the Taleban are fully backed by Pashtun tribes and anger against US attacks on Afghanistan has united the nation." Haq’s body will be handed to his relatives in Kabul who will take it to the Pakistani city of Peshawar today for burial, AIP reported yesterday. Certainly, Haq’s death undermines US efforts to forge a broad opposition alliance around deposed King Zahir Shah to rule the country if the Taleban are toppled.
US officials said the United States sent an unmanned, armed Predator spy plane to try to save Haq, a veteran warlord who fought occupying Soviet forces in the 1980s, but he was seized while trying to flee on horseback. Musharraf sought to play down Haq’s importance in the forging of any future government.
US airstrikes have also attempted to clear a path for another opposition grouping, the Northern Alliance, to advance but it has so far made little or no progress, despite help from US military advisers and support from Russia.
In an interview airing on US television late Friday, Musharraf bemoaned the "excessive collateral damage" caused by the US-led bombing campaign and called for the strikes to end before the Muslim holy period of Ramadan, which will start in mid-November.
In Moscow, Interfax news agency said Russia would supply the Northern Alliance with 40 tanks and more than 100 armored vehicles by the end of the year. "This is the heaviest day of air attacks on this front so far," said opposition commander Mustafa from the roof of his base overlooking Bagram five km to the east.
A dust storm yesterday ruled out fighting around the northwestern city of Mazar-e-Sarif, which opposition forces have been battling to retake. But Afghan warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum said he had scored battlefield successes in three days of fighting against the Taleban near the city, which has a strategic airfield and lies across a supply route.
"We have killed 80 Taleban soldiers and taken 20 prisoners, including a Pakistani commander," Dostum told Reuters by satellite phone from near the front line. His forces had also destroyed 18 Taleban armored vehicles, including tanks, the ethnic Uzbek commander said.
A Taleban spokesman, quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press, said that French journalist, Michel Peyraud, who was arrested on Oct. 9 inside Afghanistan disguised as a woman, would be charged with spying. Inquiries were continuing into the case of Daigen Yanagida, a Japanese journalist, the report said. There was no news of the fate of two Pakistani reporters, Muhammad Irfan Qureshi and Mukkaram Khan, arrested with Peyraud.
The Taleban also said yesterday that an investigation into Peyraud was nearly over and findings would be presented in court soon. A Taleban spokesman in the eastern city of Jalalabad told the AIP that the court would see the evidence "in a day or two."
The spokesman said Peyrard was accused of spying, an offense that carries the death penalty. "Now it is up to the court to decide," he said. It was not yet known whether the trial would be in Jalalabad or the capital Kabul.
