Wed, Nov 14, 2001 page1

• Kabul falls to Northern Alliance troops

  WINDS OF CHANGE As the US struggles to organize a broad-based multi-ethnic Afghan government, events on the ground may be outstripping Washington's ability to influence events

  • REUTERS
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  Greeted by cheering residents, Northern Alliance fighters captured Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, yesterday in defiance of international pressure to stay out, after the city was abandoned by the Taliban under cover of darkness.

  "We have taken Kabul," shouted one jubilant fighter as he and fellow soldiers stood in a group on a street in the city center on day 38 of the war the US launched following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

  With the fall of Kabul, the Taliban faced another foe on the doorstep of their southern stronghold of Kandahar.

  

  Residents of Kabul celebrate and escort Northern Alliance troops entering the Afghan capital of Kabul yesterday. Reports from across the country yesterday pointed to a collapse of Taliban rule.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  Witnesses arriving in Pakistan said thousands of anti-Taliban tribal fighters had seized a nearby airport and were advancing on the city.

  In Kabul, opposition fighters entering the city shot dead a number of Taliban stragglers.

  Mopping up

  

  Children surround a dead Taliban fighter, killed yesterday in central Kabul.

  PHOTO: REUTERS

  Some Arab and Chechen fighters loyal to Saudi-born fugitive Osama bin Laden clambered into trees in the city to fire on the advancing opposition soldiers. They were shot and their bodies hung in the branches or lay sprawled on the ground.

  While the green, white and black flag of the United Front, or Northern Alliance was tacked to ministry gates, in Shahr-i-naw park in the city center the bloody bodies of seven black-turbaned Taliban militia lay dead, apparently executed with bullets to the head. Bank notes had been stuffed in their noses and ears and children spat at the corpses.

  Opposition Defense Minister General Mohammad Fahim and Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah drove into the city in a black Landcruiser, followed by a column of armed military policemen dressed in dark green uniforms. Behind them came a column of hundreds of armed Northern Alliance fighters in camouflage fatigues.

  Witnesses said armed men had occupied all major government buildings, many of which were looted by residents. Prisoners broke out of jails left by the Taliban.

  The Taliban plundered Afghanistan's main currency market before fleeing during the night in a convoy of tanks, armored personnel carriers and battered pick-up trucks, heading for their stronghold in the southern city of Kandahar.

  They took with them eight Western aid workers -- two Americans, two Australians and four Germans -- being tried on charges of promoting Christianity.

  The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press said the Taliban were regrouping to make a stand in Maidanshahr, a few dozen kilometers west of Kabul but gave no details and the report could not be independently confirmed.

  Buoyed by the lightning capture of the north of the country over the weekend and by more than a month of blistering US air strikes on the Taliban, the Northern Alliance broke through Taliban front lines outside Kabul on Monday backed by US bombing and a fierce artillery barrage.

  By dawn yesterday, their fighters had raced into the city, waving their assault rifles above their heads. Residents greeted them with shouts of "Down with the Taliban!" and "Welcome the Northern Alliance!"

  Crowds came out of the city and surrounded truckloads of soldiers poised to enter. They threw plastic flowers onto tanks.

  One Alliance commander, Gul Haidar, ordered his troops not to loot. "We should make sure that there is no problem for the people and no theft happens," he told his fighters.

  At Bagram airport north of Kabul, US special forces troops wearing civilian clothes and sunglasses and carrying M-16 assault rifles inspected the Northern Alliance positions.

  Done deal

  At trenches near the airport lay the bodies of 20 Pakistani Taliban fighters. About 20 Afghan Taliban who had surrendered and who were still armed chatted with opposition soldiers.

  "We did a deal a month ago with the Northern Alliance to surrender when they arrived," one Taliban commander named Tour said.

  The alliance is deeply unpopular among Kabul's mainly Pashtun population due to power struggles among opposition leaders in the 1990s that unleashed almost daily rocket attacks on the city and killed about 50,000 residents.

  The US wanted a broad-based deal on the structure of any post-Taliban government before the Alliance entered Kabul.

  But there have been few signs of progress on such a deal. The UN says it wants an urgent meeting of Afghan leaders to discuss the country's political future.

  The Northern Alliance's unstoppable surge into Kabul prompted urgent calls around the world yesterday for the creation of a broad-based government in Afghanistan.

  Several countries also pressed the UN to take a much more active role in the political vacuum left by the fleeing Taliban.

  "We will need to move very quickly internationally to provide the infrastructure for a broad-based interim government," British Home Secretary David Blunkett told BBC radio.

  French President Jacques Chirac underlined he point.

  "It's more urgent than ever that a [political] solution is put into effect very rapidly," he told reporters during a visit to Abu Dhabi.

  "Nothing would be worse than a transition period where there was no coordination, a situation which would not guarantee stability."

  Also See Story Inside
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Investors diversify from TSMC to other winners of AI boom

  • 2

    HSR malfunction causes delays, reduced service

  • 3

    Japan ‘mystery illness’ not new: CDC

  • 4

    Taiwan assessing recruiting from Eswatini: ministry

  • 5

    Taiwan, China coast guards argue in South China Sea