Last stand looms for Taleban at Kandahar

15 Nov, 2001 10:19 AM5 mins to read

KABUL - Anti-Taleban forces consolidated their hold over much of Afghanistan yesterday, forcing the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban into retreat for a last stand at their southern bastion of Kandahar.

Determined to press the advantage after 40 days of punishing air strikes, the United States said it was prepared to send troops into the caves and mountains of southern Afghanistan in a guerrilla campaign to ferret out militant leader Osama bin Laden.

With battlefield advances outpacing political plans in the US campaign to oust the Taleban for protecting bin Laden, the United Nations Security Council endorsed a political blueprint for a post-Taleban government and pointed the way to a multinational security force to guard major cities.

The BBC reported that the central town of Bamiyan was destroyed by the Taleban before they fled over the weekend.

Evidence has also emerged of Bosnian-style ethnic cleansing in the region involving the execution of hundreds of local ethnic Hazara men.

The Taleban caused international outrage this year by destroying two priceless Buddha statues in Bamiyan.

Meanwhile, UN aid trucks have begun rolling into Afghanistan.

Cheering Afghans greeted a barge loaded with UN aid on the Amu Darya River, reopening a vital relief route from ex-Soviet Uzbekistan over the river.

Although US special forces troops have begun spreading through southern Afghanistan, the Pentagon said it was too early to declare victory over the Taleban and bin Laden's al Qaeda network.

However, it did report bombing a building in Afghanistan where members of al Qaeda were gathered.

A US official said military jets and an unmanned CIA plane equipped with anti-tank Hellfire missiles had destroyed the building, killing a number of people.

The raid is part of the military's increased focus on finding and killing leaders of the terrorist network linked to the September 11 attacks and the Taleban militia that had sheltered them in Afghanistan.

The commander of the US war in Afghanistan is preparing a new military plan to do that.

American ground troops, now present in small numbers, still figure to play a role. But the scale and nature of their involvement will depend on whether the Taleban and al Qaeda collapse completely, flee the country or regroup to fight a guerrilla war from caves and tunnels in the mountains.

After retreating from Kabul before dawn on Tuesday as US-backed Northern Alliance fighters closed in on the capital, the Taleban have largely pulled back to Kandahar and other majority Pashtun areas in the south where their support is strongest.

Confusion hung over the fate of Kandahar. Opposition forces said they had taken the city's airport and Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said there was "complete chaos" in the city.

But Pakistani Taleban fighters coming back across the frontier said Kandahar had not fallen.

Afghan opposition and US sources said an anti-Taleban uprising was taking hold among tribes in the south who, like the Taleban, are mainly ethnic Pashtuns.

Rear-Admiral John Stufflebeem, a top operations officer on the US military's Joint Staff, said the US military still had to find and destroy al Qaeda.

"The US is prepared if necessary to conduct a guerrilla war or a counter-guerrilla war to hunt the Taleban and al Qaeda forces in the caves of southern Afghanistan if they flee there," said Stufflebeem.

A senior US official said that Taleban defections in recent days, numbering in the hundreds, have provided American and anti-Taleban fighters with significant new intelligence.

In coming weeks, the US bombing campaign will probably be dramatically scaled back.

The only remaining targets in the north are a few pockets of Taleban resistance.

Pilots returning to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt with their bombs still attached said they refrained from attacking in the south because it has become harder to tell friend from foe.

Eliminating the Taleban as a support structure for al Qaeda is a key step, but it leaves unresolved the question of how to track down Osama bin Laden and other leaders of his al Qaeda network.

It also requires consideration of an international peacekeeping force to stabilise the country.

It seems likely that the US Government will push for having troops from Islamic countries perform the main peacekeeping work, supported by US and European logistics and communications.

The original attack plan written by General Tommy Franks, commander of US Central Command, achieved its objective, the collapse of the Taleban, so suddenly that the entire approach to Afghanistan needs to be rethought, according to defence officials.

Franks is considering a host of new possibilities in light of the Taleban retreat.

Among the main issues are:

* How to pursue bin Laden and his key lieutenants, plus Taleban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar.

* The extent to which Afghan opposition groups will continue to be enlisted as American proxies on the ground.

* How to expand the humanitarian relief effort, which so far has been limited to air drops of food rations by one or two C-17 cargo planes flying daily from Germany.

* Whether and how to use air bases in the former Soviet province of Tajikistan on Afghanistan's northern border.

* The number and kind of US forces needed to establish military operations at air bases inside Afghanistan formerly held by the Taleban or threatened by Taleban artillery.

- REUTERS

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