Friction between anti-Taliban troops surfaced with a southern commander’s warning to the Northern Alliance to keep out of Kandahar, Afghanistan, as southern opposition forces captured 80 Taliban soldiers, aided by U.S. air strikes on the last pockets of resistance in the southern Afghan city.
Much of the fighting Friday centered in the region outside Kandahar airport, where the Taliban soldiers were captured along with five Taliban tanks, an anti-aircraft gun and other military equipment, said Abdul Jabbar, a Pashtun anti-Taliban tribal leader.
Another Pashtun leader, former Kandahar Gov. Gul Agha, had massed about 3,000 troops roughly 4 miles from Kandahar airport. With concern mounting from southern Pashtuns that Northern Alliance troops may be moving toward Kandahar from the north, a spokesman for Agha said the ex-governor cautioned against Northern Alliance interference in the south.
“We have enough people in Kandahar and we don’t need their help,” said Khalid Pashtun, speaking by satellite phone.
Though fighting continued, talks about a peaceful end to the conflict in Kandahar were continuing between Taliban commanders and opposition leaders, said U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. But Rumsfeld also said he doubted the Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, would surrender himself and his forces without a fight.
“I think it is likely that Omar is a dead-ender,” Rumsfeld said. “He is determined to try to re-energize the Taliban, to get the Taliban fighters to consolidate somewhere and to kill people.”
U.S. forces in Afghanistan have emphasized to opposition commanders that they want custody of the leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which for years operated terrorist training bases in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s protection. The Pentagon is hoping that the leverage gained by the U.S. support for anti-Taliban forces translates into cooperation if top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders fall into opposition hands.
Handing over leaders
Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who is stewarding the military campaign in Afghanistan, is responsible for ensuring that top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are handed over to U.S. custody.
“He’s forceful,” Rumsfeld said. “He has certainly told them unambiguously that that is our first choice. And we think it will happen. But it isn’t the kind of thing that we negotiate.”
It was the Taliban’s refusal to hand over Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terror attacks that led the United States to take military action.
Rumsfeld did not comment on whether the United States would resort to force if an opposition group refused to hand over a key leader.
“Well, one would hope one would not have to do it against their will,” he said.
The Pentagon has only just begun to examine possible procedures to carry out President Bush’s executive order to put foreigners suspected of terrorism in front of a military tribunal rather than civilian courts.
No one turned over
No potential defendant has been turned over to U.S. military custody in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld said he “wouldn’t have the vaguest idea” as to how such a defendant would be handled. He said he could not decide until he knew the facts about that person.
Facing congressional hearings next week, the Bush administration has embarked on a campaign to defend Bush’s decision, which has drawn criticism from both sides of Capitol Hill that military trials could be held in secrecy without constitutional safeguards afforded defendants in civilian courts.
“I do believe it is unfair and premature to criticize the administration for this action,” Alberto Gonzales, the president’s lawyer, said Friday. “What has been done here is not unusual in a time of war.”
In northern Afghanistan, up to 2,000 Taliban soldiers may be at large a few miles west of Mazar-e Sharif, which the Northern Alliance controls. But alliance commanders said they have not decided whether to pursue them or let them go.
Capture confirmed
On Friday, Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed that the Northern Alliance had captured a top Al Qaeda operative, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, the son of an Egyptian cleric jailed in the United States for plotting terrorist attacks in New York.
Rumsfeld would not say whether the United States has asked alliance leaders to hand over Abdel-Rahman. “We have not yet taken custody of anyone,” Rumsfeld said.
The contingent of Marines based at an airstrip outside Kandahar grew to battalion size–probably about 1,200 strong–by Friday. Also Friday, several C-130 Hercules cargo planes unloaded the additional troops at the desert base, where Marines have dug out fighting holes several feet deep and erected four watchtowers to oversee a complex of barracks, a warehouse and other buildings.
Dubbed Forward Operating Base Rhino, the camp also encompasses an airstrip that members of a construction unit struggle daily to keep repaired so that regular ferrying of supplies by planes and helicopters can continue.
Navy Seabees at the base raised a flag given to them by New York firefighters to honor victims of the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
“Two of our reservists had friends in the [World Trade Center] building, so when firefighters said, `Will you do us a favor? Wherever you go, please fly this flag to remember those people.’ We said yes,” said Seabee Chief Petty Officer Robert Tanner.
Friction between Afghanistan’s tribal factions also surfaced at post-Taliban government talks in Bonn, where a delegate for the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, walked out, apparently in protest that his people were not being adequately represented at the discussions.
Election pushed
Also, one-time Northern Alliance President Burhanuddin Rabbani said Friday that only 200 foreign peacekeepers would be needed in Afghanistan during the transition to a new government. He also insisted that a new administration should be chosen through a popular election, which he said could be arranged within two months.
United Nations officials called some of Rabbani’s demands unrealistic and said the alliance’s delegation at the Bonn talks had given an assurance that Rabbani would respect any decisions reached during the discussions.
The Pentagon remained non-committal Friday on the issue of a peacekeeping force in Afghanistan, saying it is up to the ruling factions that control most of the country to decide whether they need help in providing security. Rumsfeld said he saw no reason why peacekeepers would interfere with the U.S. campaign against terrorism so long as they confined their role to securing humanitarian relief.
Humanitarian aid
Humanitarian groups have criticized the Bush administration for not more forcefully backing the insertion of peacekeepers into Afghanistan, saying the administration’s hesitance is slowing the delivery of famine relief.
Kenneth Bacon, who was Pentagon spokesman during the Clinton administration, criticized the U.S. posture from his new post as president of Refugees International, calling the U.S. reluctance to back a peacekeeping force “disturbing.”
“There is a security vacuum in and around the cities of Mazar-e Sharif and Jalalabad. As a result, relief agencies can’t re-establish food distribution networks,” Bacon wrote in a letter to President Bush. “The U.S. and its allies cannot afford to win the military battle and lose the humanitarian campaign.”
