Herald news services
JABAL SARAJ, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s opposition alliance will be able to break the Taliban’s front lines "within a few days" if the United States maintains its intense bombardments there, a senior alliance official said Thursday.
"Our forces will reach their highest level of preparation in a few days time," said Abdullah, the foreign minister of the opposition’s government-in-exile. "Our forces are ready to break the front lines."
For the past 11 days, U.S. air attacks have shifted away from high-profile urban targets in favor of Taliban front-line positions north of the capital, Kabul, and near the northern cities of Mazar-e-Sharif and Taloqan.
Speaking in the opposition-held town of Jabal Saraj, Abdullah praised this week’s air raids, which for the first time included the use of B-52 bombers, as being "very effective."
He said 15 Taliban tanks were destroyed in five days of bombing along the front lines. He said U.S. jets on Wednesday hit a Taliban air base and ammunitions depot in the northern city of Kunduz, forcing the hard-line Islamic militia to empty the depot and take its contents to the city of Mazar-e-Sharif.
The front lines north of the capital, Kabul, were mostly silent Thursday, with the biggest flashes and rumbles coming from a heavy, late afternoon thunderstorm. Early this morning, jets were in action again, dropping bombs through the night until after dawn. On Wednesday, at least one B-52 bomber, backed by F/A-18 jets, had pummeled Taliban positions at the front.
Alliance officials say they are preparing for an attack on Mazar-e-Sharif. Capturing the city would enable the Northern Alliance to cut Taliban supply lines to western Afghanistan and open routes to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to the north.
Meanwhile, a prominent Afghan tribal leader has begun the first known armed uprising against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan since the U.S.-led air strike campaign began, fighting off a Taliban attack Thursday and claiming to control part of a southern province, according to his family and media reports.
Hamid Karzai, an influential figure from the leading ethnic Pashtun tribe, said he survived a Taliban attack on a meeting of tribal elders he convened in Uruzgan province, and his forces captured 12 Taliban soldiers in the skirmish.
Karzai, who is close to Afghanistan’s exiled former king Mohammed Zahir Shah, returned to Afghanistan last month to promote a national gathering aimed at forming a broad coalition government to replace the ruling Taliban, according to his brother, Qayum Karzai.
Although any rebellion led by Karzai would seem to be in its infancy, its onset would be welcomed by U.S. officials, who have been anxious for the Taliban to come under attack in the Pashtun heartland where the hard-line Islamic militia is strongest. The Bush administration has been working to foment a Pashtun insurgency in the south to match the military campaign being waged by the Northern Alliance coalition led by ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara minorities in the north of the country.
Until Thursday, there had been no reports of fighting against the Taliban in the south, and few confirmed defections of local commanders.
The CIA has sought to encourage Pashtuns to desert the Taliban, using money and offers of future prominence. But the agency has few people who can speak Pashtu, the local language, and reports say it has been relying on Pakistan to make the contacts.
The Pentagon says it plans to more than triple the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, part of a substantial broadening of Washington’s effort to help opposition troops take the offensive against the Taliban regime, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday.
Flatly denying persistent reports that the Bush administration has held back its support for opposition forces in order to give diplomats time to devise a post-Taliban government, Rumsfeld said U.S. air support for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, already substantial, will increase as soon as additional American troops arrive to spot targets.
"We have a number of teams cocked and ready to go; it’s just a matter of having the right kind of equipment to get them there and the landing zones in places where it’s possible to get in and get out," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing.
He said the deployment of U.S. special troops has been hampered by bad weather and, on at least one occasion, by ground fire from Taliban forces. But he said he expects the reinforcements to arrive "in the days immediately ahead."
Discussing the support for anti-Taliban forces, Rumsfeld said the focus is primarily on the Northern Alliance, the remnant of the government that the Taliban overthrew in 1996. But he said Washington will also support other anti-Taliban groups.
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