Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance is threatening to storm Kabul and launch an offensive on all fronts in coming days, despite a US bombing strategy apparently aimed at preventing them racing to fill the power vacuum they say is being created by a crumbling Taliban regime.
Incensed at what they regard as a US-Pakistani plot to keep them from advancing on Kabul, the key prize in Afghanistan, Northern Alliance military and political leaders met this week to finalize their battle plans and to capitalize on increasing signs of disarray in the Taliban ranks.
Despite public statements from opposition leaders that Kabul is not the priority in their battle plans, participants in the meeting said a new strategy was agreed independently of the American game plan.
PHOTO: AFP
"The attacks will be simultaneous on all fronts," said General Fazel Ahmad Azimi, governor and military leader of Kapisa province north of Kabul. "The Americans plan their own bombing procedure. They don't coordinate their bombing targets with us. We have our own program."
Another senior alliance commander, General Abdul Basir, said the offensive would be launched within days. "We will begin the operation on our own. In the nearest future we will begin attacking. Probably after three to four days. All simultaneously, on all fronts. There is impatience to attack Kabul."
The saber-rattling from the Northern Alliance came amid signals from the Americans and the Pakistanis that moves by the Afghan opposition may upset their scheme to topple the Taliban and install an interim coalition government in Kabul.
Unnamed Pentagon officials told the Los Angeles Times that the US air strikes strategy was specifically to avoid bomb and missile attacks that would hasten any Northern Alliance advances on the ground, while President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan warned this week that the alliance must not be allowed to "take advantage" of the air strikes.
Afghan experts in Pakistan are warning that there could be a bloodbath in Kabul should the alliance enter the city to exact retribution on a vanquished Taliban. About 50,000 people died in Kabul in fighting when the alliance controlled the capital from 1992 to 1996.
The alliance thinks it is being sidelined by the US and Pakistan in the race to settle Afghanistan's future dispensation and is planning to up the ante, though doubts remain about its capacity to come good on its threats, particularly because its supply lines would be overstretched if it launched simultaneous offensives around Kabul, in the north, the west and the center.
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