Author: Willis Witter
Publication: The Washington Times
Date: October 25, 2001
URL: http://www.washtimes.com/world/20011025-95527052.htm
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Members of
a militant Pakistani guerrilla group smuggled the bodies of eight colleagues
from the Afghan front back into Pakistan, then confirmed yesterday that
the eight had died in U.S. air strikes.
They were the first confirmed deaths
of foreign forces joining the battered Taliban.
The guerrilla group succeeded in
smuggling the bodies back after being refused entry at the main border
crossing between Kabul and Peshawar.
A total of 22 Pakistani guerrillas
were killed in the strikes earlier this week, according to members of the
Harakat ul-Mujahideen, one of the most militant of more than a dozen Pakistani
groups that send guerrillas to train in Afghan-istan and fight security
forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
"They died at the front, fighting
alongside the Taliban," said Gul Zamin, an activist in the banned group.
The deaths, while providing evidence
that the U.S. strikes are reaching the Taliban and their allies on the
ground, are likely to further inflame Pakistani militants, who already
have been protesting the air strikes across the border in Afghanistan.
Colleagues first tried to bring
the bodies through the border crossing at Torkham, on the road from Kabul
to Peshawar, hoping to bury them in their homeland, according to reporters
at the scene.
A Taliban official said the Pakistani
border guards blocked the way, saying, "You wanted to fight with the Taliban,
you can bury them in Afghanistan."
According to one account, the fighters
died Monday night near Bagram, about 30 miles north of Kabul, where the
Taliban faces off against the opposition Northern Alliance.
Another Harakat official told the
Associated Press that they died while meeting in a house in Kabul, when
a bomb came through the roof.
Harakat is designated by the United
States as a terrorist group, and its assets were frozen following the Sept.
11 attacks on the United States, in which more than 5,000 people died.
Pakistan not only served as a rear
base during the 1979-89 war against the Soviet Union, but Pakistanis joined
the Afghan struggle in large numbers.
Of the 22 Pakistanis reported dead
yesterday, nine were buried at a site near Bagram. Eight were smuggled
into Pakistan and the whereabouts of the other five were unknown.
In northern Afghanistan yesterday,
Mohammad Atta, a Northern Alliance leader, said his opposition forces,
based south of Mazar-e-Sharif, had mounted an offensive toward the district
of Keshendeh during the night.
He said U.S. air attacks on enemy
lines had enabled his men to win control of four villages in fighting,
which left between 70 and 80 Taliban troops dead and 150 captured.
The alliance, which claims to have
teams of U.S. special forces among its ranks, hopes to take Mazar-e-Sharif
to open supply routes leading to Kabul and into western Afganistan.
Near Kabul, the Taliban has concentrated
an estimated 6,000 troops in hills about 30 miles north of the city. At
a front-line post at the Rabat district, alliance deputy brigade commander
Haji Bari claimed the opposition had brought up thousands of troops and
weapons to the strategic Panjshir Valley in anticipation of any march on
Kabul.
"We're waiting for the order," he
said against a background of crackling artillery and machine-gun fire.
For the moment, however, alliance
fighters were pulling back their positions to put their troops at a safe
distance from U.S. bombs hitting Taliban forces, he said.
In Islamabad, U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie
Bunker said yesterday that more than 70 percent of the population of the
main cities of Herat, Jalalabad and Kandahar had fled to escape the U.S.
bombing.
The Taliban claims that more than
1,000 civilians have been killed in the bombardments, but Washington dismissed
such claims as lies, acknowledgin g however that some bombs had gone astray.
The United Nations said yesterday
that U.S. cluster bombs had hit a mosque in a military camp, a military
hospital and a civilian village during attacks on the western Afghan city
of Herat Monday night.
Meanwhile, the Taliban ambassador
to Pakistan - their only foreign envoy - returned to Afghanistan yesterday
for consultations.
Asked in an interview where he was
going, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef would say only that he was not going to
the Taliban power base of Kandahar.
"I want to hold talks with the authorities
on some issues which cannot be discussed on the telephone," the Pakistan-based
Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) quoted Mr. Zaeef as saying before he crossed
the border at Torkham. It was suggested that he could not talk by telephone
for fear of giving away the locations of Taliban leaders.
In a related development, Pakistani
officials detained a pro-Taliban scientist who played a key role in helping
Pakistan become a nuclear power. The government said Sultan Bashiruddin
Mahmood had been placed in protective custody.
Officials at the Pakistan Atomic
Energy Commission said Mr. Mahmood had been a project director for the
nation's nuclear program.
Abdul Majid, who was also detained,
worked with Mr. Mahmood for years at the Atomic Energy Commission. Mr.
Mahmood's links with Islamic groups and his pro-Taliban sentiments had
drawn scrutiny from Pakistani security agencies in recent months, sources
at the energy commission said.
(This story is based in part on
wire service reports.)
