Posted on 11/24/2001 2:47:21 AM PST by Bad~Rodeo
BANGI, Afghanistan (AP) — Six hundred foreign fighters believed loyal to Osama bin Laden handed over their weapons Saturday, anti-Taliban forces besieging Kunduz said. But surrendering Taliban fighters said other foreigners remained in the city, ready to fight to the death. As the Taliban's last northern stronghold appeared to be falling, hundreds of Afghan Taliban soldiers — caked in choking dust — poured out of the city to the east atop tanks, pickup trucks and cars.
There was no way to verify independently the figure for the number of foreigners said to have surrendered.
Alliance commanders characterized the surrender of the foreigners — and the separate defections of at least 100 Afghan Taliban — as the beginning of a wholesale surrender. They made clear, however, that their fighters would enter Kunduz whether its defenders were ready to give up or not.
The foreign fighters surrendered in the village of Qalai Qul Mohammed, west of Kunduz, after breaking through alliance front lines, alliance commanders said.
"The 600 foreign fighters, who are Chechens, Arabs, and some Pakistanis, surrendered with their weapons," said Amanullah Khan, a Northern Alliance spokesman.
Forces of the three main generals in northern Afghanistan — Rashid Dostum, Atta Mohammed and Mohammed Mohaqik — took them to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, he said.
An alliance commander on the other side of the city, Gen. Daoud Khan, said more surrenders were expected.
"It has just started. Maybe another 700 more will be handed over. We should have all these prisoners handed over in next day or two days," he said, adding: "Maybe tonight or tomorrow we will enter into Kunduz."
The Taliban governor trapped in the city — whose name, like the Taliban supreme leader, is Mohammed Omar — had said Friday night that his fighters would walk out "peacefully and unarmed."
Speaking by satellite telephone from inside Kunduz, he told Britain's Channel 4 television: "The Taliban brothers who are from other provinces of Afghanistan, they have a way out."
But it was unclear whether he spoke for the foreign fighters as well, who have no such guarantees for free passage out of Kunduz.
The alliance prepared to move into the city in any case. At the eastern front line Saturday, Gen. Khan ordered one of his commanders: "Bring up the tanks and troops to go into Kunduz. If the foreigners fight you, fight."
Dostum also moved at least eight tanks, rocket launchers and some troops to the eastern front line to support Gen. Khan's men.
Some of the defectors from inside the city also kept their weapons and joined the Northern Alliance lines, preparing to attack the foreigners who had lived with them inside the former Taliban stronghold.
"We have up to the Northern Alliance. They are our brothers and sisters," said Shah Mahmoud. "The foreigners will never surrender, I think."
Under a deal negotiated between the alliance and the Taliban in recent days, the foreign fighters are to be put in detention camps pending an investigation into their links to bin Laden's al-Qa'eda terrorist network.
Gen. Khan said the foreigners would be tried in "Islamic courts" in Afghanistan.
But many feared the alliance fighters, whose hatred of the foreigner fighters is intense, would slaughter them rather than send them to trial.
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 attacks on the Taliban.
At the United Nations, officials announced a one-day delay for 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.
In the days before the surrender began, Gen. Khan said, he believed Pakistani fighters were fleeing by plane out of the city's half-destroyed airport, although a spokesman for the U.S. military said there was nothing to indicate any such evacuation.
We control the skies over Afghanistan and we would not let anyone fly out and take people who we have repeatedly said wouldn't be allowed to leave," Marine Corps Lt. Col. David Lapan said in Washington.
Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, has repeatedly appealed for measures to save Pakistani fighters who joined the Taliban side, fearing they face slaughter if the Northern Alliance seizes the city.
A militant Islamic group in Pakistan, which claims to have sent thousands of Pakistanis to fight alongside the Taliban, threatened to target Afghan refugees in Pakistan if its supporters are executed in Kunduz.
"People are angry and will target Afghan refugees belonging to Northern Alliance areas if our people are executed or treated unfairly," said Maulvi Mohammed Khalid Khan, one of the group's leaders.
Alliance troops had already been moving incrementally toward Kunduz. Gen. Khan said his fighters moved Friday into the Taliban-held town of Aliabad, just south of Kunduz, where militia fighters gave up without a fight. A U.S. official also reported fighting near the town of Khanabad, just to the east.
Fighting also continued further south near Kabul in the village of Maidan Shahr, where alliance fighters have been attacking Taliban holdouts in the rocky, barren hills.
And in the area outside the eastern city of Jalalabad, where bin Laden was spotted just before the U.S.-led bombing began and could still be hiding in caves, U.S. bombs continued to fall overnight and early Saturday.
A U.S. official reported Friday that the Northern Alliance might be making its move toward the Taliban's last remaining area of control, in the south.
Advance elements of an alliance force have entered Helmand province, just to the west of the Taliban base of Kandahar, the official said.
Absolutely. First the vaunted Republican Guard, now these panty-waists. They are brave when it comes to murdering defenseless women, children, and civilians. But they run like scared sheep when confronted by real fighters. Fight to the death? Yea, sure.
A lengthy stay in a primitive detention camp, followed by a lengthy trial is the prudent course. Once the Afghan refugees are home, it will be time to give the terrorists a public platform and a memorable, but dignified ceremony.
Wouldn't that be "formerly loyal"?
Wouldn't that be "formerly loyal"?
Not to mention the "fighter" part. More like "Six hundred foreigners running with their hands up screaming 'Don't shoot - Please don't shoot!' surrendered today ..."
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