Taliban admits Northern Alliance controls Mazar-e-Sharif

By Steven Gutkin

Associated Press

JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan — The Taliban admitted today that it lost the city of Mazar-e-Sharif to opposition forces in northern Afghanistan. American officials confirmed that opposition forces were in the city and said fighters of the ruling Islamic militia were fleeing.

The Taliban’s Bakhtar News Agency said Taliban fighters had been forced to retreat with their weapons and equipment because of sustained bombing by U.S. warplanes.

"For seven days continuously, they have been bombing Taliban positions. They used very large bombs," said Bakhtar News Agency chief Abdul Henan Hemat.

The capture of Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday was the biggest success since President Bush launched airstrikes Oct. 7 to punish the Taliban for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

If the opposition can hold the city — which in the late 1990s changed hands several times and was the site of bloody massacres — it would open a land bridge to neighboring Uzbekistan, allow a flood of weapons and supplies to the opposition alliance, and give U.S.-led forces their first major staging ground in Afghanistan for the campaign against the Taliban.

A senior defense official in Washington, D.C., said reports from the area indicated that the anti-Taliban forces have taken the city and that large numbers of Taliban fighters have switched sides. But he said the U.S. had not been able to confirm those reports.

The commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt said scores of planes from the aircraft carrier took off Friday to attack Taliban troops retreating from Mazar-e-Sharif.

"We thought this would be a very slow advance on the city, but it appears the Taliban have fallen back, and over the course of the day we’ve seen numerous convoys coming out of that area," Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald said.

"We’ve been going after the tanks they had in the area and the armored vehicles, and of course any of the command-post and troops in the area," he said. "We have a lot of evidence since the Northern Alliance has been overrunning those positions that we caused a lot of disruption."

He said the U.S. planes were in the air to "try to take out as much as we can" as the Taliban fall back so they are not able to set up new positions.

A spokesman for one of the opposition commanders, Gen. Rashid Dostum, claimed American Green Berets took part in the battle. But a senior defense official in Washington said he couldn’t confirm the claim.

Philip Smith, Dostum’s Washington representative, said U.S. special forces along with CIA operatives and Turkish troops were working with Dostum, an Uzbek commander who once controlled Mazar-e-Sharif.

Dostum said 1,500 Taliban soldiers were captured, and many of them volunteered to fight for the alliance, Smith said.

Vice President Dick Cheney said the city’s loss would be a serious blow to the Taliban, because they had worked so hard to protect it since the bombing began.

"It’s a significant development," Cheney said. "It would be perceived, I think, as a significant defeat."

Mazar-e-Sharif has a population of about 200,000 — most ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, the same as the opposition. Most Taliban are Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

Mazar-e-Sharif has a large airport that could be refurbished for American and allied aircraft to conduct humanitarian missions and mount attacks against the Taliban. And the city controls a supply route from Uzbekistan, 45 miles to north — a passage that is not often blocked by winter snowfalls, a key concern for the opposition alliance.

The opposition announced an amnesty for anyone who formerly supported the Taliban, a Northern Alliance spokesman said. Human rights groups say the opposition put as many as 2,000 Taliban to death in Mazar-e-Sharif when they took the city back from the Taliban in 1997.

From Mazar-e-Sharif, the opposition can continue to press for control over the capital of Kabul. Hundreds of opposition troops, backed by tanks, massed at the front line after darkness fell Friday. Commanders said they would advance toward the capital soon.

A Reuters cameraman saw about 800 Northern Alliance fighters marching toward the front line along with four tanks and artillery while U.S. jets roared overhead, bombing Taliban positions overlooking the opposition-held Bagram airport, about 19 miles north of Kabul.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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