Author: Peter Graff
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: October 7, 2001
Taliban fighters danced for joy
when they heard hijacked planes had smashed into the World Trade Centre,
and boasted they would withstand any US attack, a deserter from the Afghan
ruling militia said on Saturday.
The 23-year-old fighter, who defected
10 days ago across the frontline north of Kabul to troops of the Opposition
Northern Alliance, said Taliban fighters believed Saudi-born fugitive Osama
bin Laden was responsible for the attacks, and had vowed to stand and wait
for US strikes. "After those attacks on the United States, the Taliban
were so happy.
They all said: 'You see, Osama has
struck at America. If anybody comes here to attack us, we will defeat them,'"
he said, sitting in a room filled with Alliance fighters.
The man, who gave his name as Khan
Jan, is a member of the Tajik ethnic minority that has mainly been opposed
to the Pashtun Taliban. He said he had been forcibly conscripted by the
Islamic militia four months ago at the start of the Taliban's late summer
offensive.
He was giving one of the first accounts
of conditions on the Taliban side of the front since hijacked planes destroyed
the World Trade Centre and damaged the Pentagon on September 11.
Although he spoke at an Opposition
Northern Alliance base, within earshot of commanders who had helped him
to escape, his account did not support the Alliance position that morale
in the Taliban trenches has begun crumbling.
"In the evening, when we were listening
to the radio, we heard (about the strikes on) Voice of Shariat. And all
my friends in the room, they became really happy, they were laughing when
they heard it on the radio. They were saying, 'they f***ed America!'" he
said. Some of the Taliban even expressed their joy by dancing steps of
the Atan, a Pashtun traditional folk dance. The Taliban generally forbid
dancing in public as un-Islamic.
Morale held up even after the US
vowed to retaliate, he said. "After America said it would strike, (Taliban
leader) Mullah (Mohammad) Omar went on the radio and said we should not
be afraid if America will strike, or Russia. We will defend ourselves with
all our forces. We will send our men to the borders and be prepared to
defend ourselves against America," he said.
"They say they will stand and fight.
Whether they can withstand the strikes or not only Allah knows. Mullah
Omar said they would fight, and the people cannot contradict him."
Khan Jan said he had been working
as a shopkeeper in the Taliban-held northern city of Kunduz four months
ago, when two Taliban officials came into the store and conscripted him.
"I didn't have time to tell my family.
They would have learned about it from the neighbours in the next shop,"
he said. He said he was one of 70 conscripts from the town flown by plane
to Kabul and sent to the front just north of the capital. "We had no training
at all," he said.
"The Pakistanis and Arabs (fighting
with the Taliban) are all trained. But us, they give us no training at
all." (Reuters).
