CITY OF BLOOD AND BETRAYAL

City of blood and betrayal

FRIDAY NOVEMBER 23 2001
FROM IAN COBAIN IN THE SEIGE OF KONDUZ

KONDUZ was on the brink of a bloodbath last night, as rival Northern Alliance warlords vied for the city and the Taleban’s besieged forces threatened to turn on each other.

As one Alliance general attacked from the east, another moved in from the west, while inside the last Taleban stronghold in northern Afghanistan foreign fanatics were preparing to kill Taleban defectors.

The split between rival Alliance commanders determined to seize Konduz has undermined hopes of building a broad-based Afghan government, as another apparently straightforward military situation dissolved into back-stabbing ferocity.

One general claimed to have negotiated a surrender of Taleban fighters while another promised only further bloodshed, as both sought to control the city and its stockpile of Taleban weapons.

In an announcement that is said to have triggered street celebrations in the besieged city, the Uzbek General Rashid Dostum claimed to have negotiated a settlement allowing the Islamic militia to lay down arms and surrender.

Less than an hour later, on the opposite side of the city, Tajik General Mohammad Dawood Khan was mobilising his tanks, artillery and thousands of infantry, in an attempt to take it by force.

By last night he appeared to have pushed the Taleban back several miles towards the small town of Khanabad, taking scores of prisoners as they went and accepting the surrender of several hundred deserters who had agreed to switch sides.

It was the first sign of a schism in the fragile, multi-ethnic Alliance, pitting one tribal leader against another. Whichever general wins, the 220,000 inhabitants of Konduz, a city the size of Derby, will be caught in the crossfire. General Dawood’s assault was under way yesterday evening, with his T55s firing shell after shell into the Taleban’s hilltop positions 20 miles east of Konduz, while American B52 bombers soared overhead, dropping 500lb bombs that kicked dust and debris high into the air.

General Dostum’s forces were reported to have entered the western outskirts of the city. The Taleban had appeared to be on the point of surrender, but as the Alliance fractured, the remaining fighters showed little sign of giving up.

“We know there have been talks, and we know the high-ups say it means peace,” Mohammad Shamam said as he struggled across the front line towards the safety of the city of Taloqan in the east, followed by his burka-clad wife and six frowning children, with their worldly possessions on the backs of two donkeys.

“But only a fool would gamble that there will be anything but war.”

As if to echo his cynicism, three Taleban mortar shells screamed over his head and exploded beside the road ahead, sending dozens of refugees scurrying across the rice fields. Two minutes later a fourth shell landed, and then a fifth.

Throughout the day, thousands of General Dawood’s troops moved towards the front, most of them marching dozens of miles on foot, but some making their way on ageing flat-bed lorries and pick-up trucks. Large numbers of T54 and T55 tanks could also be seen travelling west towards the Taleban’s defences, followed by Russian-made armoured fighting vehicles.

Most of the troops were ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks, but among them were 400 Pashtun fighters who had thrown in their lot with the Alliance and agreed to wage war against the Pashtun-led Taleban.

Closer to the front, hundreds of troops sheltered in rice fields, or rested on the roofs of the mud houses. All around them were the scars not just of the last month’s fighting against the Taleban, but of 22 years of war: rusting Soviet tanks lay along the wayside while the fields and hills were pockmarked by ancient shell craters. Much of the area was mined by the Russians, and more mines were laid during fighting against the Taleban in 1997 and again last year: all along the road, one-legged men and boys hobbled out of their homes in dirt-poor villages to watch the advancing army.

Tracer rounds could be seen arcing across the sky and the deafening roar of laser-guided bombs showed that American jets were continuing to seek Taleban targets.

As the people of Konduz waited to discover their fate, so too did the thousands of foreigners fighting alongside the Taleban, many of them Islamic fundamentalists thought to be loyal to Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network. The issue of touris khareji, the foreign tourists, has been the major stumbling block during the surrender negotiations although yesterday, in their hunger for the spoils of Konduz, both warlords appeared to have put out of their minds.

There was growing evidence that some foreign Taleban have already slipped the net, with increasing numbers of refugees claiming that Pakistani transport planes have been landing at the city’s airfield, bringing American dollars for the trapped Taleban commanders and evacuating young Pakistani and Punjabi fighters. It was unclear why the United States, which controls the airspace over Afghanistan, would have permitted such flights.

There is also suspicion at General Dawood’s headquarters that General Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek, will have quietly extricated many of the fundamentalist fighters from Uzbekistan, the former Soviet republic, to the north.

Up to 2,000 men from Uzbekistan are thought to have been fighting with the Taleban under the leadership of Juma “Jumaboy” Namangani, a former Red Army paratrooper. He died in an American bombing raid four days ago.

General Dostum’s forces chased thousands of Taleban to Konduz after prising them out of the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif two weeks ago.

The general declared that he had secured the city’s surrender after talks with Mullah Dadi Allah, the senior Taleban commander in Konduz, who is reported to be barely able to control his foreign fighters.

General Dostum, who has changed sides three times during 22 years of war in Afghanistan, appears to have been been anxious not only to take possession of the Taleban’s military assets in Konduz, but also to persuade its fighters to join his own army, and so strengthen his hand in forthcoming talks on the country’s future.

Shortly after General Dostum announced his success, Yunus Qanuni, the Alliance Interior Minister and a close ally of General Dawood, said: “The surrender talks have failed, and now we are forced to choose the military option.”

General Dawood’s forces are arrayed to the east, north and south of Konduz.

His deputy, General Shak Jahan, said that he believed there to be 120 Taleban tanks in Konduz, along with 400 artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns and more than 1,000 Soviet-built armoured personnel carriers. General Dawood is thought to have just eight serviceable helicopters, while it is unclear whether General Dostum has any.

Remarkably, senior Alliance figures conceded that the real trophy for the eventual conquerer of Konduz will be more prosaic. As winter sets in it will become increasingly difficult to move forces quickly over the mountainous terrain. Both men are now said to be desperate to seize the Taleban’s huge fleet of battered Toyota pick-up trucks.