The Taliban agreed yesterday to surrender their last northern stronghold, including thousands of Arabs and other foreign fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden, Northern Alliance commanders said. However, details about how the foreigners will be treated remain to be settled.
Fighting erupted along the frontline near the Taliban stronghold, Kunduz, even as the agreement to surrender the city was announced. However, Alliance officials blamed the fighting on communications problems and insisted the deal had not fallen through.
Anti-Taliban tanks rolled across the front line and Taliban shells crashed near refugees fleeing the besieged city. The Taliban held out in Kunduz after they abandoned the capital Kabul and most of the country this month following punishing US airstrikes.
A senior alliance commander, Atta Mohammed, said by satellite telephone that the surrender agreement came late Thursday afternoon in a meeting with top Taliban commanders, including Deputy Defense Minister Mullah Fazil.
Ashraf Nadeem, a spokesman for Mohammed, said the alliance would send 5,000 fighters to Kunduz, "possibly Saturday" to oversee the surrender of the Taliban.
"We told them, `You are safe. We can transfer you to your provinces,'" Mohammed said.
The fate of foreign fighters with the Taliban in Kunduz remained to be worked out in talks set for Friday in the alliance-held city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Nadeem said. He said the Taliban had agreed to surrender the foreigners but wanted guarantees about their treatment.
The issue of the foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban had been the main obstacle to a surrender deal for days. The foreigners -- mostly Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens -- feared they would be killed like other bin Laden fighters in other areas which have fallen under northern alliance control.
The US is pressuring the Alliance against accepting any deal which might allow them to escape. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, is also anxious to avoid the slaughter of Pakistanis even though his government supports the US-led war against terrorism.
Nadeem said Taliban negotiators were willing to surrender the foreigners but wanted assurances they would not be massacred. The Taliban insisted that both sides agree on such details as how the foreigners would be treated if the alliance puts them on trial, he said.
Mohammed Daoud, a senior northern alliance commander, said the fighting broke out yesterday afternoon when Taliban forces -- not knowing about the surrender agreement -- tried to prevent about 200 of their fighters from surrendering to the northern alliance just east of Kunduz.
Taliban leaders Noorallah Noori and Mullah Fazil had not yet returned from Mazar-i-Sharif with word of the agreement, Daoud said.
"They didn't know," he said. "The negotiations had finished in Mazar-i-Sharif but they didn't know about the result."
In a possible response to the Taliban's assault, Northern Alliance fighters streamed toward the frontline in trucks, tanks and on foot and commanders already at the front led troops on mountain paths closer to Taliban positions. Alliance forces fired artillery and rockets toward the city.
"When we conquer Kunduz, make sure you get some of the cars," one commander told a line of men trudging through the dust and mud of an abandoned front-line village.
As the shells fell, refugees streaming out of Kunduz by foot, donkey and car dashed for cover, some women in head-to-toe white shrouds flapping around them. One group of women, confused, dived into a ditch exposed to the incoming mortar fire, their fingers tearing desperately at the dirt as shells pounded around them.
"The United States is bombing and the people are escaping," said refugee Mahmedi, breathless and too much in a hurry to stop to talk. "The city is empty."
Refugees said they were escaping both the anger of foreign fighters trapped in the city and the US bombs.
Several refugees said US bombs hit three mud houses in a front-line village Tuesday, killing many civilians. One refugee, who said he helped bury the dead, put the toll at 40. Their reports could not be confirmed.
A US-led coalition launched attacks on the Taliban on Oct. 7 after they refused to hand over bin Laden, the chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
In Islamabad, Musharraf urged the Red Cross to do all it can to prevent massacres of foreign fighters at the hands of the Afghans, delivering the appeal to the visiting president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Jakob Kellenberger.
After the meeting, Kellenberger said the organization is not in a position to help arrange any safety guarantees. "It cannot get involved in political negotiations on conditions of a surrender," he told reporters.
A surrender in Kunduz would leave only one major city -- the southern base of Kandahar -- in Taliban hands. Taliban spokesman Syed Tayyab Agha vowed that the Taliban would fight to defend Kandahar, their spiritual base, and the surrounding provinces they still control.
The Taliban's isolation grew further yesterday when Pakistan informed the staff of the Afghan Embassy in Islamabad -- the last Taliban post outside Afghanistan -- that it should shut down. Diplomats came to their offices early in the morning, but left after a few minutes, embassy official Mufti Yousuf said.
"We are delighted to know that Pakistan is severing diplomatic relations with the Taliban," coalition spokesman Kenton Keith said in Islamabad.
US service personnel held Thanksgiving celebrations in the region even as their war effort continued.
In the Arabian Sea, the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt said prayers and watched Miami Dolphins cheerleaders wave pompoms to the tune of James Brown's Living in America.
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
THUGGISH BEHAVIOR: Encouraging people to report independence supporters is another intimidation tactic that threatens cross-strait peace, the state department said China setting up an online system for reporting “Taiwanese independence” advocates is an “irresponsible and reprehensible” act, a US government spokesperson said on Friday. “China’s call for private individuals to report on alleged ‘persecution or suppression’ by supposed ‘Taiwan independence henchmen and accomplices’ is irresponsible and reprehensible,” an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson told the Central News Agency in an e-mail. The move is part of Beijing’s “intimidation campaign” against Taiwan and its supporters, and is “threatening free speech around the world, destabilizing the Indo-Pacific region, and deliberately eroding the cross-strait status quo,” the spokesperson said. The Chinese Communist Party’s “threats