NewsMax.com Wires
Monday, Nov. 19, 2001

In Kunduz, a city in northern Afghanistan, several thousand Arab, Chechen and Pakistani Taliban troops are fighting what appears to be a battle for survival.

Fearing that they would be killed if they surrendered to the Northern Alliance, they have vowed to fight until the bitter end. Earlier reports from Kunduz said the foreign fighters had killed several Afghan Taliban troops who wanted to surrender. Six Chechen fighters are believed to have committed suicide by jumping into the nearby Amu River, and another group of six Arab fighters blew themselves up rather than surrender to the Northern Alliance whose commanders have vowed to kill all foreign fighters.

Reports from the Taliban headquarters of Kandahar also speak of the Taliban vowing to "fight 'til death" for a city from where they ruled most of Afghanistan until their collapse last week. Kabul's fall to the Northern Alliance on Tuesday triggered a rapid withdrawal of Taliban forces from most of the country, confining the religious militia to two small pockets in the north and the south.

To oust the Taliban from its remaining power bases, U.S. forces stepped up their bombings on Kunduz and Kandahar Sunday. The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press news agency described the airstrikes as the fiercest since Oct. 7 when the United States launched its military operation against the Taliban for refusing to handover Osama bin Laden. The Saudi fugitive is suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.

The agency also reported that between 2,000-3,000 foreign Taliban troops in Kunduz were ready to surrender to a U.N. force if the world body guaranteed that they would not be killed. They also want a safe passage from Afghanistan.

The offer, conveyed to the Northern Alliance by two prominent Taliban commanders Dadullah and Fazil, came after continuous bombing of Taliban positions in and around Kunduz by U.S. B-52 bombers and navy jets.

Witnesses spoke of wave after wave of U.S. jets bombing Taliban positions, sparking off huge explosions on hilltops where the foreign fighters have dug in.

Heavy bombing on Kandahar also continued throughout Sunday and early Monday after the Taliban militia imposed a dusk to dawn curfew in the city. The Northern Alliance has enforced a similar curfew in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif.

Talking to journalists by telephone from Kandahar, Taliban officials denied reports that the militia had surrendered the city to local Pashtun tribal leaders.

Pashtun is the majority ethnic group in Afghanistan, which supported the Taliban militia until their collapse last week. Since Kabul's fall to the Northern Alliance, several Pashtun leaders have urged the Taliban to hand over power to local tribal councils. The Pashtuns fear that if they continue to support the Taliban, the international community will exclude them from the U.N.-sponsored talks deciding Afghanistan's future.

They also fear that the Northern Alliance, which is dominated by Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara ethnic minorities, may consolidate its grip on power, leaving the Pashtuns out in the cold.

In another development, Kabul Television resumed its broadcast Sunday, five years after the Taliban closed it. A 16-year old girl became the first woman to appear on television since Taliban banned women from all venues of public life. "You are welcome to watch television in free Afghanistan," she announced.

And in Washington, the Post reported that U.S. air force officials were angry at not getting swift clearance for attacks on senior Taliban and al-Qaeda members spotted by airmen.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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