For the decency of surrendering, they deserve the honor of a public platform and a dignified ceremony.
Posted on 11/24/2001 12:00:43 AM PST by JohnHuang2
BANGI, Afghanistan, Nov 24, 2001 (AP Online via COMTEX) -- Six hundred foreign fighters from the besieged city of Kunduz have surrendered, a northern alliance commander said Saturday.The commander, Amanullah Khan, said in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif that the fighters - Chechens, Arabs, and some Pakistanis - surrendered with their weapons.
They were brought to Mazar-e-Sharif by forces of the three main commanders in northern Afghanistan, Rashid Dostum, Atta Mohammed and Mohammed Mohaqik, the three main commanders in northern Afghanistan.
The men were from a group of fighters who had apparently broken out of the besieged city overnight and fled toward Mazar-e-Sharif. They were handed over by a Taliban delegation.
Many of the foreign fighters are loyal to Osama bin Laden, and it has been feared that those inside Kunduz would choose to fight to the death.
The commander characterized it as the start of a wholesale surrender by the defenders of Kunduz, not merely the handover of an isolated band of fighters.
"This process of surrendering has started. This is the first group. This will be continuing," said Khan.
He did not say how many fighters remained to be handed over, or when that would take place. There had been estimates that more than 1,000 foreign fighters were among the defenders of Kunduz.
At the United Nations, officials announced a one-day delay in a conference in Germany aimed at paving the way for a new Afghan government following the Taliban's collapse. The meeting will now open Tuesday because of delays in getting participants to the venue in Bonn, U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.
As diplomats worked toward peace, alliance commanders around Kunduz prepared for war.
The Taliban governor of Kunduz, whose name, like the Taliban supreme leader, is Mohammed Omar, confirmed late Friday that the garrison was prepared to surrender.
"The Taliban brothers who are from other provinces of Afghanistan, they have a way out," Omar said in a satellite telephone interview with Britain's Channel 4 television. "As a result of the talks with Gen. Dostum, they are allowed to get out of Kunduz peacefully and unarmed."
But the foreign fighters in Kunduz - up to 3,000 Arabs, Pakistanis and others who came to Afghanistan to fight alongside bin Laden and the Taliban - were not represented at the talks. Some appeared to believe their choice was to fight or die.
An American official in Washington said some of the fighters in the besieged city may be deputies and lieutenants to bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks which sparked the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban, and to the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar.
The surrender deal calls for the Taliban to turn over the foreign fighters and for the alliance to put them in detention camps pending an investigation into their links to bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.
By ELLEN KNICKMEYER Associated Press Writer
Copyright 2001 Associated Press, All rights reserved
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For the decency of surrendering, they deserve the honor of a public platform and a dignified ceremony.
Certainly not sent home.
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