Author: Sayed Salahuddin and Rosalind
Russell
Publication: www.expressindia.com
Date: November 19, 2001
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=4672
Kabul, November 18: US bombs pounded
Afghanistan again on Sunday but the beleaguered Taliban held on in its
southern bastion of Kandahar, dismissing reports that it would retreat
to fight a guerrilla campaign in the mountains. The Taliban said Osama
bin Laden -- prime suspect for the September 11 hijack attacks that killed
some 4,600 people in the US -- had left the territory they controlled and
they did not know where he was. The Pentagon said he was still in the country.
The Afghan and foreign forces lined
up against the militia squabbled over the country's future and whether
international peacekeepers should be deployed. The Northern Alliance, which
drove the Taliban out of Kabul last week, insisted it wanted to build an
inclusive new government -- but gave no time frame. Ethnic Pashtun tribes
in the south, deeply suspicious of the mainly ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern
Alliance, said they were pursuing their own efforts to agree a bloodless
settlement with the Taliban and warned the Alliance not to march on Kandahar.
The Taliban has been pounded by 43 days of relentless US air strikes to
punish them for harbouring bin Laden.
WHERE IS BIN LADEN?
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic
Press (AIP) quoted the Taliban's envoy to Pakistan as saying bin Laden
was not in the rapidly shrinking Taliban-controlled parts of Afghanistan
and he did not know where the fugitive Saudi-born militant was. Mullah
Abdul Salam Zaeef, who returned to Pakistan on Saturday after a visit to
Kandahar, had told journalists then that bin Laden was still in Afghanistan.
The Pentagon says it believes bin Laden is still in the country, and Britain's
Sunday Times newspaper reported that US and British special forces had
narrowed down the hunt to a small area of south-eastern Afghanistan.
AIP said US bombing early on Sunday
had killed at least 30 villagers near the Khyber Pass on the Afghan border,
and that 62 people had been killed in raids on near the city of Khost,
site of many of bin Laden's former training camps. The reports could not
be independently verified. Exiled former King Zahir Shah, seen as a key
figure in a post-Taliban government, said a broad-based government was
the only way to end decades of conflict in the war-weary country.
"The only hope for long-standing
peace and stability in Afghanistan is to put in place a political structure
which is representative of all Afghan people and all sectors including
Pashtuns, Tajiks and Uzbeks," he told Britain's Sunday Telegraph. "If this
is not in place then peace will not come." The military advance of the
Northern Alliance, which swept into Kabul on Tuesday just days after starting
a major land offensive, has far outstripped political progress on agreeing
a future government for Afghanistan.
The Alliance had told other factions
and its foreign allies that it would not enter Kabul until the structure
of a broad-based post-Taliban government had been agreed. But the Alliance
now holds the capital, while a political deal is days or weeks away at
best. The UN says the Northern Alliance is obstructing efforts to arrange
a crucial meeting on the country's political future. The Alliance wants
talks on Afghanistan's future to take place in Kabul, while the UN wants
a neutral location. Seeking to end the impasse, UN envoy Francesc Vendrell
arrived in Kabul on Saturday for meetings with Northern Alliance leaders.
His arrival signalled the return of the U.N. to the ravaged city after
an absence of more than two months.
Zahir Shah's son-in-law, General
Abdul Wali, told theSunday Telegraph the king was worried by the Alliance
seizure of Kabul. "The Northern Alliance promised us that it would stop
at the northern gates of Kabul to give others in the South time to move.
But they did not stop," Wali said. "We're not judging anyone, just saying
a promise is normally something you keep. Obviously, the king is very concerned
because he fears fighting might break out between factions and cause more
casualties to innocent civilians."
DISPUTE OVER FOREIGN TROOPS
The issue of foreign troops on Afghan
soil drove a wedge between some Northern Alliance commanders and the international
US-led coalition that played a crucial role in aiding the opposition's
military successes. Senior Northern Alliance figures said that as long
as they maintained security in Kabul, there would be no need for an international
peacekeeping force. Some were unhappy about the arrival of 100 British
special forces troops near Kabul.
"The agreement is that less than
100 British troops would come to help secure the airport to allow for the
delivery of humanitarian aid," Haji Qahar, a senior aide to Northern Alliance
Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, told Reuters in Kabul. "At the moment
we don't have a problem with them but there is no need for more soldiers.
We have many of our own soldiers." Ousted former president Burhanuddin
Rabbani returned to Kabul on Saturday five years after the Taliban drove
him out. But his arrival will not be widely welcomed.
The Pashtun majority and Shi'ite
groups fear the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance that entered Kabul
on Tuesday will try to cling to power rather than build an inclusive government.
The deposed President, who still holds Afghanistan's United Nations seat,
is unpopular even within some factions of the Northern Alliance. Many anti-Taliban
groups want Zahir Shah to head a new regime rather than the ethnic Tajik
Rabbani. The white-bearded and white-turbaned Rabbani, 61, said he had
no intention of trying to hang on to power.
He said the Northern Alliance would
respect the will of a traditional Loya Jirga -- or grand assembly of tribal
elders and faction chiefs -- to decide on a future government. But he did
not say when such an Assembly would be held. Worried Kabul residents well
remember the vicious factional squabbles among the group's leaders after
they toppled Afghanistan's communist rulers and seized the capital in 1992.
They turned on each other and a civil war erupted that sparked almost daily
rocket attacks on Kabul which killed 50,000 residents in five years. Banditry
and lawlessness were rife as warlords carved up the country into their
own personal fiefdoms.
