Anti-Taliban Forces Take Jalalabad
Sources: Airport at Kandahar Also Captured


KABUL, Afghanistan (Nov. 14) - The northern alliance took over key symbols of power in Kabul, including the defense ministry, on Wednesday despite a pledge to support a broad-based government. Anti-Taliban forces took control of the eastern city of Jalalabad and battled for control of the airport outside the Taliban stronghold Kandahar, U.S. and Afghan sources said.

The new gains were scored by local leaders unaffiliated with the northern alliance, including ethnic Pashtuns, long the backbone of Taliban support. The U.S. effort to foster dissent among Pashtun leaders has persuaded some of the groups to rise up, although tribes are acting on their own volition, a U.S. official said.

A number of Pashtun tribes in the south - perhaps 23 or more - appeared to have risen up against the Taliban, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem said. ''Whether or not they're working in concert, we don't know,'' he told journalists.

Pashtun and Taliban fighters battled during the day over the airport outside the southern city of Kandahar, and there were conflicting reports over who held the facility.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Pashtun fighters had taken Kandahar's airport and there was sporadic fighting in the city itself. Afghan sources in Pakistan said 200 fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a Pashtun tribal leader were holding the airport.

A Taliban official in the town of Spin Boldak south of Kandahar, Mullah Najibullah, said Taliban fighters were firing on the airport from the surrounding hills. But by Wednesday night, he said the Taliban had retaken the airport and the city was quiet. A U.S. official disputed the claim.

Stufflebeem said anti-Taliban forces were fighting the Islamic militia in a ''number of areas'' around Kandahar, but it was ''not clear to us that they have in fact taken the airport.''

Jalalabad - located between Kabul and the Pakistan border - is now firmly in control of anti-Taliban forces, but it's not clear if they are affiliated with the northern alliance, said a U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Afghan sources in Jalalabad said Wednesday that the Taliban had surrendered control of the city to Pashtun elders after negotiating a deal in return for safe passage with their weapons. Stufflebeem said northern alliance forces were ''at the outskirts'' of Jalalabad.

With the Taliban fleeing south and apparently struggling to prevent their movement from disintegrating, U.S. special forces are hunting for senior members of the Taliban leadership on key roads, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. ''They have been interdicting the main roads that connect the north to the south to see what's going on and to stop people that they think ought to be stopped,'' he said.

At the same time, U.S. jets were keeping up the pressure with airstrikes on Taliban targets. Warplanes pounded areas south of Jalalabad thought to contain hide-outs of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network. Bombing was also reported at a base in Khost, southeast of Kabul near the Pakistani border.

Taliban officials insisted the movement remained intact in its southern strongholds despite its losses. In a statement to the Afghan Islamic Press, a Taliban official, Mullah Abdullah, said the movement's supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and his ''guest,'' bin Laden, were ''safe and well.''

In Kandahar, the only major city under Taliban control, the militia made announcements Wednesday over loudspeakers of the city's mosques warning that anyone found on the streets after 9 p.m. would be shot, according to the Afghan Islamic Press.

Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zaher Shah, urged the Afghan people to unite and freely choose their own destiny in a statement made public Wednesday to be broadcast by radio in his homeland.

Zaher Shah, who has lived in exile in Italy since his ouster in 1973, called for ''solidarity, unity and cooperation'' and said the holding of a meeting of tribal leaders was the only way to bring a government representing all Afghan factions.

Aides to the former king said he intended to return to Afghanistan soon to serve as a symbol of national unity, though Zaher Shah has said he does not seek to regain the throne.

In the capital, Kabul, radio broadcasts resumed and television was promised soon. Northern alliance officials returned to government offices they abandoned in 1996 when the Taliban drove them from power.

Officials portrayed the takeover of key ministries, such as defense and interior, as temporary and said they support a U.N.-supervised political settlement in which all ethnic groups would be represented. Pakistan - which was once the Taliban's ally and has long had a hostile relationship with the alliance - severed international telephone links it had given to the Taliban for ministries and offices.

In the south and east of the country, the situation was chaotic as local leaders appeared to challenge the Taliban.

Yunus Khalis, a local mullah and a former guerrilla fighter, took control of Jalalabad after a deal was struck with Taliban forces in the city for their withdrawal, the Afghan Islamic Press reported. Khalis said he was independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance.

Witnesses said Khalis' followers had also taken control of the Torkham border station to the east of Jalalabad and were preventing anyone - including Afghans - from entering the country.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that tribal elders took control Wednesday of the town of Gardez, in Paktia province about 60 miles south of Kabul. Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander with the alliance in Kabul, said there were reports of anti-Taliban uprisings in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak.

U.S military planners are seeking to persuade Pashtun tribal leaders unhappy with the Taliban to defect. The CIA is believed to be running the attempt to create a revolt. Other tribes may be making an opportunistic grab to fill the power vacuum, the U.S. official said.

In other developments:

- The northern alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said international peacekeepers would not be needed in Afghanistan once the Taliban are defeated across the country. The top U.N. envoy on Afghanistan has said a multinational force should be deployed in the country.

- Britain ordered thousands of troops to prepare for possible duty in Afghanistan. Indonesia and New Zealand offered troops for any eventual peacekeeping mission in the country.

- The United Nations sent its first delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, 55 tons of winter supplies via a barge across the Amu Darya River that forms the border with Uzbekistan.

The Taliban abandoned Kabul and headed south before dawn Tuesday after the northern alliance, backed by intensive American bombing, fought their way to the edge of the city.

Taliban supporters say the withdrawal from urban areas throughout the country is a strategy that will allow the militia and its allies to wage a guerrilla war from Kandahar's rugged mountains and caves.

In the capital, relieved residents awoke Wednesday after a night free of the nearby crash of U.S. bombs. Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets.

Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, who headed a northern alliance radio station before Kabul fell, assumed control of the newly renamed Radio Afghanistan and resumed airing music, which the Taliban had banned as frivolous.

He hired three women as news readers and aired statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and return to work. Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home except in the health sector.

Kabul residents cheerfully abandoned other Taliban edicts - children flew kites, teen-agers listened to music and men shaved their beards. But most women retained their all-encompassing burqas.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force. On Tuesday, northern alliance spokesman Abdullah said his movement supported the plan.

For the time being, however, the alliance, especially the Jamiat-e-Islami faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved into key ministries in the capital.