WASHINGTON/KABUL, 26 November — As the siege of Kunduz plays out its final stages, with reports that Northern Alliance troops have finally entered the city after mass surrenders by the Taleban, the focus is shifting to the fate of the thousands of fighters who are now — or who will soon become — prisoners of war.
Many hundreds of them, among whom were scores of foreign fighters, are already reported to be dead, killed in an apparent prison riot in which a US adviser was also said to have been killed.
Details were sketchy, but the incident came after acting President Burhanuddin Rabbani pledged that Alliance forces would not harm surrendering foreigners — mostly Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens linked to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network — who defended Kunduz alongside the Afghan Taleban.
"Although the Taleban have committed some war crimes in Afghanistan they come under the general amnesty that we have declared and they are pardoned if they put their guns down," Rabbani said.
The question now is whether this was just an empty promise, or whether circumstances in the prison became so chaotic that Alliance forces had no option but to do what they did.
About a dozen British commandos in civilian clothes and US troops in air force uniforms were fighting alongside the Northern Alliance forces trying to quell the uprising, guiding US aircraft in bombing the prison near Mazar-e-Sharif, Time magazine correspondent Alex Perry reported. The Pentagon confirmed US warplanes were deployed to help the Northern Alliance put down the uprising, but gave no indication of casualties.
One witness spoke of about 100 dead, while the Time correspondent said he had heard 300 to 400 Taleban were killed in the air strikes directed by US and British commandos on the ground.
A US Special Forces commando was killed inside the prison and another was trapped inside the ancient fort in Qala-e-Jangi, 10 km west of Mazar-e-Sharif, Perry added. "There were two American soldiers inside the fort, one of whom was disarmed and killed...and another one was also in trouble," Perry said. "He was out of ammunition, had managed to sort of hold off the Taleban with his pistol but he was out of ammunition when the main body of American and British people arrived. There’s no word on his fate yet. But the Americans were mounting a rescue operation."
US military officials denied any US troops were killed, but did not address the question of whether any other Americans were involved.
In developments around Kunduz, Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his main force, reported to have taken control of the city early yesterday, were poised three km (two miles) to the west to allow ethnic Tajik forces the honor of entering the city first, a Tajik commander said.
"Following a meeting of the military chiefs of the northern provinces, I have been designated the future governor of Kunduz and I must be the first to enter the city," explained Commander Muhammad Daoud.
He was speaking to reporters in Khanabad hours after his troops swept through the town 20 km (13 miles) east of Kunduz without firing a shot.
The fall of Kunduz will leave the Taleban with Kandahar, their spiritual home, as the only large city under their control; they also hold a few mainly desert provinces in southern Afghanistan’s ethnic Pashtun heartland.
Before a planned conference Tuesday in Bonn to discuss the political future of Afghanistan, Rabbani opened the door for the eventual participation "as individuals" of some Taleban members in a future interim government.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency, which has close ties with the Taleban, reported that troops loyal to Dostum seized control of Kunduz early yesterday after 2,500 of his men moved into the city overnight.
Dostum sent a top officer into the commercial and industrial city of 30,000 to dismantle militia defenses and ship Taleban and Al-Qaeda prisoners west to his headquarters in Mazar-e-Sharif, AIP said.
Another Northern Alliance commander, Sadreddin, said Khanabad fell to his forces without a fight. "We entered the town from four directions and encountered no resistance," he said.
Separately, Daoud told reporters that Juma Namangani, a militant leader from Uzbekistan who was a long-time ally of Bin Laden, had been killed while defending Mazar-e-Sharif with the Taleban. Namangani had spearheaded a militant campaign to establish a theocratic rule in Uzbekistan and been sentenced to death there.
Regional leaders from Afghanistan’s biggest ethnic group, the Pashtuns who made up the core of the Taleban, said after a meeting in the Pakistani town of Quetta that the Taleban must now surrender Kandahar peacefully.
With inter-factional talks starting Tuesday, the Northern Alliance has made a significant political gain by recruiting Mullah Khaksar, a former Taleban deputy interior minister, who made his first public appearance Saturday since defecting when Kabul fell Nov. 13. At a news conference, Khaksar asked all ethnic groups and tribal chiefs to participate in the search for a broad government.
Rabbani said Khaksar was a good example of his Tajik- and Uzbek-dominated alliance’s readiness to work with others. He said he had agreed with Francesc Vendrell, the UN deputy representative on Afghanistan, that the Alliance would be in a slim majority at the talks in Bonn.
He said the talks would aim to agree on a shoura, or council, whose task would be to try to form a provisional administration. The next step would be to seek the endorsement of an emergency Loya Jirga, or grand assembly of tribal chiefs. "Once the provisional shoura has been approved by the Loya Jirga, the Islamic state of Afghanistan will hand power over to that administration," he said.
The Quetta meeting convened by the Ahmedzai, Afghanistan’s largest Pashtun tribe, also called for a demilitarized Kabul and urged delegates to the Bonn conference to fulfil their "historical responsibility." They also dangled the promise of an amnesty to persuade the Taleban to surrender Kandahar peacefully, saying they would send a delegation to talk to militia commanders "and maybe Mullah Omar" to avert a blood bath.
"They should come to the negotiating table," a spokesman for the meeting said. "It is a chance to save themselves, save the country and save innocent people. Taleban, especially moderate Taleban, should be given an amnesty," he said. "They should give up their guns and go back to their villages."
As far as the "foreign terrorists" are concerned, the spokesman said, "it is up to the world community to decide."
A fresh sighting of Bin Laden — at a fortified encampment 56 km (35 miles) southwest of Jalalabad — was reported by the New York Times, quoting a Kabul official. "We have some people who told us that three or four days ago, Osama Bin Laden was in Tora Bora," said the official. "He is moving at night on horseback... he sleeps in caves." An Alliance commander said last week that Bin Laden is at a base 120 km (75 miles) from Kandahar.
Mullah Omar is still in Kandahar, according to a former local commander who told reporters in Quetta that he saw Omar being chauffeured around the city center on Friday. "I saw him by Kabul bazaar, in the center of Kandahar," he said. "He was in a pick-up truck and had two motorcycles alongside his vehicle."
The Taleban maintain their control over Kandahar and its surroundings despite some advances by local Pashtun leaders backed by US and British commandos. Opposition commander Hamid Karzai said that local tribal forces had attacked the Taleban Friday near Takhtapul, some 45 km southeast of Kandahar. "People rose up against the Taleban and liberated the area," he said. "The Taleban tried to counterattack and retake the area but failed."
