KABUL/WASHINGTON, 16 November — Mulla Muhammad Omar, spiritual leader of the Taleban, sounds like an increasingly desperate man. Still encamped in the former Taleban stronghold of Kandahar, his defiant warning in a radio interview yesterday of a “big” plan to destroy the United States sounded more like a rant than a threat. As he spoke, all around him in Afghanistan territory previously held by the Taleban was shrinking further with every hour that passed. Even in Kandahar itself, hostile tribes were reportedly causing chaos. And in Kunduz, 20,000 Taleban soldiers — many of them Arabs — were trying to escape a siege of the city and flee to Dushanbe, the capital of neighboring Tajikistan. They were said to be desperate, in the knowledge that the Northern Alliance would almost certainly execute them if they were caught.
Despite the chaos and impending doom, Mulla Omar refused to cooperate in the formation of a new government in Afghanistan — “we prefer death,” he claimed — and insisted Taleban forces could regroup and fight on. Osama Bin Laden, head of the Al-Qaeda network, also stated that he would prefer death to capture by the US.
The US special forces on the ground in Afghanistan are hunting him and his beleaguered Taleban protectors down.
Taleban spokesman Mulla Abdullah said “America can never arrest Bin Laden alive,” according to the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).
“Bin Laden has decided that death is better than being handed over to the Americans. He prefers death,” said the spokesman, who dismissed rumors that Bin Laden had been detained.
Meanwhile, American officials were skeptic that Bin Laden or his Al-Qaeda group were in possession of nuclear weapons, though some did not rule out the possibility of the group acquiring some crude form of atomic weapons. The officials believe that Bin Laden might have obtained or tried to obtain nuclear weapons from one of the former Soviet states. Observers fear that the loss of ground in Afghanistan by Taleban could lead to a suicide operation using either nuclear or biological weapons.
In Washington, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said yesterday some leaders of Al-Qaeda and the Taleban believed killed in US airstrikes on two buildings, one in Kabul and the other in Kandahar, over the past two days.
“There was some senior leadership in both,” said Clarke.
US Army general, Tommy Franks, said American forces were “tightening the noose” on senior leaders of the Al-Qaeda and it was only a matter of time before it is destroyed.
Several thousand Taleban fighters were resisting troops of the Northern Alliance in the northern city of Kunduz where they were surrounded. Many were reported to be Arab followers of Bin Laden who feared they would be killed if they surrendered to their native Afghan foes. US warplanes heavily bombed Kandahar, adding to the chaos there. Hamid Karzai, a pro-royalist former deputy foreign minister, said Alliance and tribal fighters had taken Kandahar’s main airport from the Taleban.
Omar earlier ordered a withdrawal from the southeastern province of Ghazni, marking another Taleban retreat south into their Pashtun ethnic heartland, AIP reported.
Ghazni city, some 140 kilometers southwest of Kabul, controls the main road linking the capital to Kandahar, where Omar was reportedly safe.
“The Taleban stand united behind his leadership and he continues to be in full command,” Mulla Abdullah was quoted as telling AIP. “Our leadership has decided to continue the struggle. Even if we lose control of all the cities we will mount a guerrilla war from the mountains.”
He said Omar had been consulting with his commanders. “We have decided that we will continue our armed struggle,” he said. Hamid Karzai told AFP tribal people had already approached the outskirts of Kandahar and there was a state of disorder inside the city.
Alliance general Muhammad Daud told a press conference the Taleban had up to 30,000 fighters, “including more than 10,000 foreign mercenaries, Chechens, Pakistanis and Uighurs” dug in around the northern city. “The town is surrounded, but its mayor has urged us to put off an attack for two days to allow civilians to flee,” Daud added. Daud said Pakistani “military personnel” were evacuated from northern Afghanistan this week by planes sent from neighboring Pakistan. Heavy US air strikes were carried out close to Kunduz ahead of the assault. A US B-52 bomber pounded Taleban positions yesterday around Kunduz. An AFP reporter in Kunduz, capital of the province of the same name, saw the B-52 unleash a carpet of bombs on hills around the town of Khanabad, about 20 kilometers east of Kunduz.
“The Taleban outnumber us. We are counting on the US strikes to help us,” said commander Makmud Safdar in Bangi, a village a few kilometers east of the Taleban-controlled town of Khanabad.
“Most of the Taleban who have been fleeing the northern provinces are holed up in Kunduz,” he added.
The BBC said Omar’s interview was recorded late Wednesday, after Omar rang in via satellite telephone from the Taleban’s stronghold of Kandahar in the south of the country. “The current situation of Afghanistan is related to a big cause — that is the destruction of America,” he added. “The plan is going ahead and God willing it is being implemented, but it is a huge task beyond the will and comprehension of human beings. “If God’s help is with us this will happen within a short period of time. Keep in mind this prediction.”
Asked if it meant the possible use of nuclear, chemical or biological arms, he said it was not a matter of weapons.
“The real matter is the extinction of America. And, God willing, it will fall to the ground. The BBC said it posed its questions via a satellite telephone to a Taleban intermediary, who passed them on to Omar through a hand-held radio.
The intermediary then attached the telephone receiver to the radio for the BBC to pick up his answers.
In the interview, conducted in Pashto for BBC World Service radio, he said the Taleban “prefer death than to be part of an evil government.” He also insisted that the Taleban were still holding “four or five” provinces in Afghanistan, despite sweeping opposition gains.
Pakistan, a key member of the US-led coalition, yesterday moved troops and tanks to its southern border with Afghanistan that officials said had been sealed in case Bin Laden tries to enter to evade the US hunt for him.
A train carrying the soldiers and tanks was seen headed to the southwestern border town of Chaman.
There was no immediate official explanation for the move of army soldiers and tanks to the border, which is usually guarded by paramilitary forces. But Pakistan’s chief military spokesman told reporters in
Islamabad that dispatching more paramilitary forces was one of the measures taken to tighten security at the border with Afghanistan. “We are trying to do our best so that our porous borders are controlled,” he said. But a Foreign Ministry spokesman said he did not think Bin Laden or Mulla Omar would want to seek refuge in Pakistan.
The spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, said Islamabad was exercising “extreme vigilance” at the border to prevent any unauthorized entry into Pakistan.
Border officials in Pakistan’s Balochistan province said the southern frontier with Afghanistan had been sealed and not even trucks bringing Afghan fruit were allowed to enter Pakistan from the Chaman border crossing.
In another development, eight Western aid workers held for three months by the Taleban on charges of preaching Christianity won their freedom after Alliance fighters rescued them from prison and US military helicopters flew them to Pakistan.
The two Americans, two Australians and four Germans, employees of the German charity Shelter Now International, were picked up by three US Special Forces helicopters late Wednesday night from a field south of the Afghan capital, Kabul.
They were flown yesterday morning to the Chaklala air base near Islamabad where they were met by diplomats from their respective embassies.
The eight aid workers, who were detained along with 16 Afghan colleagues, could have faced the death penalty. Their trial was interrupted by the US bombing of Afghanistan.
The 16 Afghan employees of Shelter Now were also safe after breaking out of Poli Charki prison in central Kabul.
The Afghans detained by the Taleban along with the eight aid workers are all safe after breaking out of jail, one of the Afghans told AFP yesterday. He and his 15 colleagues broke out of the Poli Charkhi prison in central Kabul as the Taleban abandoned the Afghan capital to the waiting forces of the Alliance.
The Alliance denied reports yesterday that Burhanuddin Rabbani, the country’s UN-recognized president, had returned to the Afghan capital. “Professor Rabbani is still in north of Kabul. He is not expected to come to Kabul today,” Younis Qanooni, the Alliance’s interior minister, told AFP yesterday. Earlier, a diplomat at the Afghan Embassy in Tajikistan was quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax as saying the president ousted in 1996 had arrived in Kabul.
