November 14, 2001
Taliban Troops Abandon Capital Without a Fight
By DAVID ROHDE with DEXTER FILKINS
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| ((AFP)) |
| Northern Alliance soldiers celebrated as they entered Kabul today after capturing the Afghan capital. |
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| ((AFP)) |
| Soldiers of the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan entered Kabul on Tuesday, hunting Taliban stragglers and
their allies from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida movement. |
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| (The New York Times) |
KABUL, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Nov. 13 — Capping their stunning victories in the north, Afghan opposition fighters rolled into Kabul on Tuesday after Taliban troops slipped away under cover of darkness, abandoning the capital without a fight.
The Associated Press also reported heavily armed alliance troops roamed the city, hunting Taliban stragglers and their allies from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida movement. At least five Pakistanis and two Arabs were slain..
On the city outskirts, women forced into virtually total seclusion under Taliban rule waved excitedly to foreigners. Hundreds of people celebrated in the streets. At least one child flew a kite, an act also banned under the Taliban.
Pakistan, America's new ally in the war against terrorism, had extracted a promise that the Northern Alliance — which represents groups inimical to the southern Afghan Pashtun tribes supported by Islamabad — would not be allowed to take over the capital, and thus the government of Afghanistan. It appears the Northern Alliance has disregarded this promise.
A senior Pakistani intelligence official, quoting what he said was a message from the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to his troops on Sunday night, said that the mullah had ordered the withdrawal so that American planes would stop bombing Afghan cities and the Taliban and Northern Alliance could fight on equal terms.
In Washington, a senior administration official said, "It is clear that the Taliban are leaving and the Northern Alliance is moving in."
This morning, hundreds of Kabul residents raised their fists and chanted, "Long live America" and "long live Massoud," referring to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the slain Northern Alliance leader. Many of them streamed out of the city to meet Northern Alliance forces, while men threw away their turbans and cut their beards.
Nusrat, a 21-year-old Kabul resident, said, "All of the people are happy because they are free. All of the people are congratulating each other."
But by noon today, some people began to express fears of chaos and a renewal of the civil war that gripped this city before the Taliban takeover in 1996. Young men who had seized guns from Taliban bases roamed the streets, acting as self- declared police officers. Older residents said they hoped Northern Alliance soldiers would quickly enter the city and secure it.
In recent days, American planes have bombed Taliban tanks and troops on the move as the Northern Alliance captured cities across northern Afghanistan. But the official in Washington said he had no confirmation that Taliban forces leaving Kabul were being hit.
The mood among Northern Alliance troops was jubilant.
A tank unit commander, General Ezmerai, said he remembered retreating down the same road in 1996 as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.
"I'll never forget that time," he said. "Hundreds of tanks driving across the Shamali plain and there was no morale to turn and fight the Taliban. It has been my biggest dream to return to this place."
He said Vismillah Khan, the commanding general of the area, was with 2,000 of the special police the alliance had said might enter Kabul if there was a security vacuum.
A day after reporters saw Northern Alliance troops coolly execute captured Taliban troops and loot the bodies of those apparently killed in fighting, the bodies of six more Taliban soldiers lay on the road here.
The Associated Press quoted witnesses as saying that the retreating Taliban forces took with them eight foreign aid workers, including two American women, accused of spreading Christianity in this Muslim country. "I saw them with my own eyes. They put them in the truck and then left at midnight. They said they are going to Kandahar," Ajmal Mir, a guard at the abandoned detention center where the eight had been held, told The AP.
City residents reported that hundreds of other prisoners had been freed from jail after Taliban guards abandoned their positions.
Gen. Basir Salengi said he had orders from the alliance's interior and defense ministers not to enter Kabul. "We will get an order to enter the city," he said, "but to only go to the military bases."
In Taliqan, some 150 miles northeast of Kabul and one of the cities that has fallen to the Northern Alliance in the past four days, commanders also voiced their joy.
"The Taliban are abandoning Ka bul," said Daoud Khan, the regional commander who took Taliqan after some Taliban troops withdrew from it and others simply swapped sides. "They began last night."
The Northern Alliance will be sorely tempted to claim the prize of Kabul, and the onus will be on Washington to minimize any Northern Alliance retribution, and to try to assemble — as swiftly as possible — a new form of government for territory now under the alliance's control.
A senior administration official in Washington said Monday night that Washington's political strategy would still be on track if any Northern Alliance troops who did enter the capital acted simply as a patrol to confirm that the Taliban had left, and most forces stayed on the outskirts of the city.
"A lot depends on how they do it," the senior administration official said. "If they take the city in the name of a broad vision for a new Afghanistan and don't move in in a big way, that is one thing. If they take it narrowly for themselves and there are acts of revenge or atrocities that's different."
In Pakistan, which until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, had firmly backed the Taliban, a senior intelligence official cast the latest developments as a tactical decision by the Taliban rather than a triumph of Islamabad's foes in the Northern Alliance. "The sweep of the Northern Alliance has not been so much a military victory as a collapse or withdrawal of the Taliban," the official said. "The Taliban leadership seems to have given the message `Get out of the entrenched front lines and save yourself from American bombardment.' "
The official quoted what he said was Mullah Omar's last message to his commanders, delivered through the Taliban intelligence service on Sunday night, as saying: "Defeat and retreat are tests from God, but the mujahid does not fail these tests. Our strength lies in ground warfare, which will be better manifested if we leave the cities and take to the mountains."
"Defending the cities with front lines that can be targeted from the air will cause us terrible loss. Changing our strategy will save the lives of mujahedeen and of our civilians because once the Northern Alliance enters the cities, the bombing from the air will stop. Inshallah, then we will fight the proxies of the infidels as equals."
Hours before the dramatic developments around Kabul, the Northern Alliance rebels said they had captured the western city of Herat as they advanced across several fronts in northern Afghanistan.
The reported capture of Herat followed the fall this weekend of Mazar- i-Sharif, a key town on the road to Uzbekistan, where American troops are stationed some 100 miles north of the border, and of Taliqan, a town further east that sits on the road between Kabul and the north.
Alliance leaders said Taliban forces had retreated from both Taliqan and Mazar-i-Sharif and were converging on Kunduz, which lies in between. The rebels claimed that the Taliban were cornered there.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company
