Situasjonen i det "befriede" Afghanistan vil mest
sannsynlig vise seg å bli en overgang fra pest til
kolera. Enda en gang. Som en "seirende" soldat fra
Nordalliansen i Kunduz uttrykker det i reportasjen
fra the Guardian: "Give me bread." At US marines evt.
skulle klare å finne bin Laden og noen av dennes
med-galninge og skyte dem ned på bakgrunn av noen
foreløpig syltynne indisier for deres skyld i
angrepet 11.9 vil neppe endre denne soldatens
situasjon. Heller ikke Bonn-konferansen (av visse
historiske grunner finner den ikke sted i Berlin og
vil derfor ikke gå over i historien som "den 2.
Berlinkonferansen", selvom innholdet er det samme:
imperialistisk maktdeling, denne gangen ikke på
Balkan men i Afghanistan) vil det.
I dagens "Orientering" på dansk radio p1 kom den
garvede Midtøsten-korrespondenten Lars Møller
Rasmussen inn på det virkelig bemerkelsesverdige i
denne saken: At hverken CIA eller FBI eller engelsk
etteretning klarte å oppdage den terror som ble
planlagt, trass i at planene kom dem for øre år i
forveien og at flere involverte satt arrestert, bl.a.
en sentral egypter fra egyptisk "jihad". Møller
Rasmussen gjorde uttrykkelig oppmerksom på at
tidligere grundigt dokumenterte innslag fra ham om
samme tema omhyggelig er blitt tiet ihjel i dansk
presse. Er forklaringen den som han selv antydet: at
hvis sannheten om CIAs innsats kommer fram i denne
saken vil det føre til at de fleste innser at første
skritt i en effektiv terrorbekjempelse i verden må
være å legge ned CIA?
Karsten Johansen
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,
606748,00.html
Allies direct the death rites of trapped Taliban
fighters
Luke Harding in Mazar-i-Sharif Tuesday November 27,
2001 The Guardian
There is no way out from the Qala-i-Jhangi: the 19th
century fortress on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif
where they are now trapped. Hundreds of their
colleagues lie dead. The Taliban's foreign fighters
are going to their doom with a defiance verging on
the flamboyant.
Last night a small group of up to 40 volunteers were
still holed up in a house in the corner of the
castle's rambling compound. They signalled their
presence with firework-like bursts of gunfire, just
to remind their enemies crouching on the shadowy
ramparts above them that they were not yet dead.
After spending years killing their fellow Muslims,
the Taliban's Arab and Pakistani fighters have
finally got the jihad they were looking for. The
foreign volunteers - who surrendered on Saturday only
to overpower their guards the following day - know
they have hours to live.
Authoritative sources in Mazar-i-Sharif revealed
yesterday that eight British SAS soldiers were
coordinating the mission to wipe out Taliban
resistance inside the castle. They arrived on Sunday
afternoon, soon after the fighters took control of
the building. "They pulled up in two long-range
desert patrol vehicles. They were clearly British and
not American," the source said. "They have been
leading the firing at the Taliban's positions. You
can tell they are special forces because their firing
is more disciplined: they use single shots rather
than bursts."
Six American special forces officers joined the SAS
soldiers on Sunday. More piled in yesterday, arriving
in a Toyota minibus. When the prisoners began their
revolt at 11.20am on Sunday, two American officers
were in the compound: a CIA agent known as Dave and
his colleague. The Taliban killed the second American
immediately, one opposition soldier said. "When the
prisoners spotted the American they overpowered their
guards and started fighting. They killed the American
first," Commander Wahidi said.
Other soldiers, however, claimed the American soldier
had been killed several hours later, leading an
attack on the Taliban's thick-walled house. "I saw
one of them throw a boulder at the guard's head. When
he fell down they took his gun. Other prisoners
seized bayonets," recalled another witness, Ustad
Mahabob Shah.
The fighting appears to have started when the guards
began tying up the prisoners. They had managed to
secure 250 of the 400 detainees. The remaining
prisoners - suspecting they were about to be executed
- then revolted. Their fears were unwarranted: the
Americans had taken pains to school General Abdul
Rashid Dostam, the castle's owner, and his fellow
opposition commanders that the Taliban prisoners
should be treated according to international law.
In the end the fears turned out to be meaningless,
and most of the fighters rapidly achieved the
martyrdom they had been groping for. As gunfights
broke out across the castle's tree-filled gardens,
Dave escaped. He telephoned the US embassy in
neighbouring Uzbekistan on his satellite phone. "We
have lost control of the situation. Send in
helicopters and troops," he was heard shouting.
Less than four hours later, American missiles plunged
into the stable area where the Taliban had been holed
up, killing hundreds of prisoners in an inferno. Gen
Dostam, a Soviet-trained officer famed for his
ruthlessness, had approved the US decision to bomb
the prisoners, some of whom had played no part in the
fighting. The nine or 10 US missiles also killed
several Northern Alliance troops.
"It was a big mistake because they killed our
people," an opposition commander, Mohammad Alem,
complained yesterday. "Eight or nine of our soldiers
are dead and about 20 injured because of the US
bombs." Five US soldiers were injured in the same
incident, none seriously. Three were airlifted to
Uzbekistan for treatment. The bodies of the dead
Pakistanis and Arabs were still inside the compound.
Two more corpses were staring out from beneath the
castle's white gateway. They had been shot in the
head. As prisoners looted the armoury for
Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and mortars, other
people trapped inside the fortress managed to
scramble out.
Two workers for the International Committee of the
Red Cross jumped out of a window, then slithered down
the dusty ramparts. Their two cars blazed in the
courtyard. The Taliban continued to snipe at
everything that moved, climbing the trees and hiding
in the compound's lush gardens.
Eventually they got hungry. With nothing to eat they
shot dead several horses, witnesses said. "They
killed them for food," one soldier, Shirjauddin,
explained. "There are three houses in the fort. We
control two and the enemy has one."
The plan to incarcerate the foreign Taliban inside
the fortress was, from the very first, half-baked.
The castle was the venue for negotiations last week
between Gen Dostam and the Taliban's commander in the
beleaguered town of Kunduz, Mullah Faizal. Over green
tea and biscuits, the two men agreed after a
discussion that lasted until dawn that the Taliban
would surrender at Kunduz.
Mullah Faizal promised to deliver up the Taliban's
International Brigade. In return he was assured a
safe passage back to Kandahar. The foreign volunteers
duly travelled for five hours across the desert,
pitching up on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif in the
dark early hours of Saturday.
They woke up to find themselves confronted by an
opposition army crammed into pick-up trucks and
tanks. Sources suggest the foreigners had been
tricked into going to Mazar on the understanding they
would attack it. When opposition troops disarmed them
they were initially nonplussed. And then they were
angry.
The Uzbek soldiers checked only three out of the five
trucks full of prisoners for weapons. Even before
Sunday's revolt a Chechen prisoner exploded a
grenade, killing himself, two other prisoners, and
Gen Dostam's police chief. Sources last night said
one of the prisoners in the castle is Tahir Uldosh, a
senior commander of the revolutionary Islamist
movement in Uzbekistan headed by Juma Namangani.
Namangani, a close associate of the Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammed Omar, was apparently killed in Kunduz
by a US strike last week. Yesterday the Americans
bombed Qala-i-Jhangi only once. But both B-52s and
jets flew repeatedly above the castle yesterday. At
one stage opposition troops steamed out of the
compound, shouting: "The Americans are going to
bomb." But no more bombs fell.
The soldiers then unrolled their carpets on fields of
cotton plants and prayed. Ninety miles to the east of
Mazar-i-Sharif, across an atrocious non-road that
winds through the desert, more Taliban prisoners came
streaming out of Kunduz yesterday, as the town fell
to Northern Alliance forces.
With the Taliban still holding out in the
Qala-i-Jhangi, the prisoners were trucked to the town
of Shibarghan. The first Taliban to surrender from
Kunduz turned up at dawn. Opposition soldiers at the
mountainous frontline at Erganak, 12 miles west of
Kunduz, were yesterday taking no chances. They tied
the prisoners' arms together then hauled them into
lorries.
A group of 20 other prisoners arrested the previous
day were discovered in a pit. They had blackened
hands; they were freezing; they were hungry.
"Everybody is surrendering. Nobody has any power to
fight any more," one prisoner, Hafiz, complained.
"The US planes are very dangerous. We can't do
anything about them."
Later while the guards armed with rocket launchers
paused to pee in the desert, we passed their
desultory convoy; the prisoners' faces were caked
with dust.
The Taliban may be finished in Afghanistan: the
prisoners now hiding in the basement of their
Qala-i-Jhangi house will be fortunate to live for
another day. But even on the side of the victors
there is hardship and often misery. Several hours
after American planes bombed Kunduz in darkness
yesterday, I met an opposition soldier wandering
among the ridges. Few of the troops who had been
taken to carry out the Taliban's disarmament had been
fed. "Give me bread," he said, pointing to his mouth.
I had no bread to give. "Give me bread," he said.
"Give me bread."
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