Posted on 08/21/2002 5:19:59 PM PDT by knighthawk
KABUL -- Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim on Wednesday denied reports of a mass grave of Taliban prisoners said to have suffocated in Northern Alliance trucks, but said an investigation had been launched.
"I don't believe that there would be a mass grave in Dasht-e-Leili," Fahim said in the capital Kabul. "The Ministry of Defense has some contact with the concerned sources in the area and the province to do the exact investigation."
The United States on Monday said it was looking into a *** Newsweek *** magazine report that some 1,000 Taleban prisoners may have died of asphyxiation in container trucks while being transferred by the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
The growing controversy has drawn attention to the role of U.S. special forces who were coordinating efforts between the Northern Alliance commander in the region, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, and American military forces.
The United Nations said in May it had found evidence of a mass grave in northern Afghanistan when the UN assistance mission in Afghanistan and the office of the UN commissioner for human rights discovered a mass grave at Dasht-e-Leili, from which they exhumed three bodies.
A confidential UN memorandum cited by *** Newsweek *** said that the findings of investigations into the Dasht-e Leili graves were sufficient to justify a fully-fledged investigation.
The magazine said the report detailed the site as containing bodies of Taleban POW's who died during the transfer from Kunduz to Sheberghan.
A witness quoted in the report put the death toll at 960.
A spokesman for Dostum, Faizullah Zaki, told the magazine that a number of people had died of suffocation, but he put the number at between 100 and 120, AFP reported.
"They suffocated. Died, not killed. Nobody killed anybody," he reportedly said.
The Afghan government also rejected Wednesday claims by Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf that the Taleban and Al-Qaeda could be regrouping in Afghanistan, and instead said the feared forces were more likely using Pakistan to gain strength.
Fahim described as "irresponsible" Musharraf's comments that Hamid Karzai's government lacked control over much of Afghanistan, and that this could lead to the re-emergence of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda.
"If Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are reorganizing, it is on the southeastern borders of Afghanistan (with Pakistan)," Fahim told reporters here.
"On both sides of that border there are tribal zones which the Taleban and Al-Qaeda are crossing into. "They are moving like nomadic tribes in the tribal areas of Pakistan and may sometimes move into on the Afghan side of the border which are also tribal areas."
Fahim added that Taleban supremo Mullah Omar and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden were probably still alive.
He was responding to comments by Musharraf, in an exclusive interview with AFP late Monday, that the failure of Kabul and its U.S. allies to establish control outside the capital since the fall of the Taleban regime last year was allowing it and Al-Qaeda to reform as a force.
The U.S.-led military campaign overthrew the Taleban because of its support for Al-Qaeda, the terrorist network of Osama bin Laden blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States.
"The writ of this Afghan government is not spreading all over Afghanistan, which it should have," Musharraf said in the interview. "This is tribal country, tribal environment, warlords reigning supreme in various pockets, the same Taleban-cum-al-Qaeda groups may be re-grouping again, because this government does not exercise control."
Reviewing the campaign since the launch of U.S. aerial bombardments last October, Musharraf described the early phase as a "success".
But he questioned the effectiveness of the past six to eight months of operations by the now 10,000-strong coalition force.
"Initially it was certainly a success, definitely.
When the Taleban government fell, with that the Al-Qaeda fell," he said. But he said fighters from Bin Laden's network were now "running helter-skelter between the borders, maybe coming over to the Pakistan side.
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