November 13, 2001

Northern Alliance Moves Into Kabul

By DAVID ROHDE with TERENCE NEILAN

KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 13 — The Northern Alliance said it sent security forces into Kabul today following the unexpected withdrawal of the Taliban only after it received reports that armed groups in the capital were creating security problems for its residents.

"We didn't have the intention of entering Kabul," the alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah, declared at a news conference here. But he said the alliance was left with no other option once "irresponsible people" with guns took advantage of the situation and "created security problems for the people of Kabul."

Many countries, including the United States and Pakistan, had urged the alliance not to enter Kabul.

But today President Bush said the alliance had made it clear that it did not intend to occupy Kabul and that Washington would stress to the alliance the importance of human rights.

"We will continue to work with the Northern Alliance commanders to make sure that they respect the human rights of the people that they are liberating," Mr. Bush said at a joint news conference in Washington with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Dr. Abdullah said the alliance remained "fully" committed to an ethnically broad-based government for Afghanistan, and he said he had invited all Afghan groups — with the exception of the Taliban — to come to Kabul and negotiate the formation of such a government.

He said he had also asked the United Nations to send teams to Kabul to help in the "peace process" in Afghanistan. At the United Nations, the special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, called today for a two-year transitional government backed by a multinational security force.

Dr. Abdullah said today that the response to the Kabul takeover "so far has been all positive."

He said it had been perceived as "a major and significant victory for the campaign against terror." He said the fact that the alliance had not originally intended to enter Kabul "was appreciated and was realized."

The presence of alliance security forces in Kabul "was a positive development for all our neighboring countries," he said, adding: "After all, Pakistan had committed itself for the war against terror. To get rid of terrorist groups in Afghanistan should be considered by all corners as a positive development."

The United States said today that it was encouraged by the fall of Kabul but remained cautious about assessing what the Pentagon spokeswoman, Victoria Clarke, called a fluid situation in northern Afghanistan. She added that where it was possible to identify forces of the Taliban and Al Queda, they were being pursued by American warplanes.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing today that fleeing Taliban troops would be hunted down wherever they hide.

"We're going to get them," he said. "I doubt that they'll find peace wherever they select."

He said all of northern Afghanistan is under the control of anti-Taliban rebels, though pockets of resistance remained.

"This effort against terrorism and terrorists is far from over," he said. "The war is not about one man or one terrorist network or even one country."

Dr. Abdullah said 10 alliance troops had been killed in the battle outside Kabul but he had no figure for any Taliban casualties. No American or British special forces took part in the fighting, he said.

Dr. Abdullah said the Taliban had left behind most of its arms, including tanks, rocket launchers and ammunition. But he said they had taken with them eight foreign aid workers, including two American women, accused of spreading Christianity in this Muslim country.

Alliance forces were met by cheers from some residents today, but there was a generally anxious air in the city, particularly among ethnic Pashtun residents, who suffered at the hands of the alliance when it ran Kabul in the early 1990's.

The alliance's defense minister, Gen. Mohammad Fahim, and Dr. Abdullah drove into the city in a black Toyota Landcruiser, followed by a column of military police officers dressed in dark-green uniforms and armed with rifles.

Behind them were hundreds of armed alliance soldiers in camouflage uniforms. A total of about 2,000 alliance forces entered the city, split between a police unit and a military unit, both of them specially trained to maintain security.

The alliance interior minister, Yunis Qanoni, said the main body of its forces would stay on the outskirts of the city. "The forces who have entered the city are only security forces," he told Iranian television.

Residents of Kabul celebrated the fleeing of the Taliban by blaring music from radios, banned under the fundamentalists' rule. Men also shaved their beards, the wearing of which was mandated by the Taliban.

This morning hundreds of Kabul residents raised their fists and chanted, "Long live America!" and "Long live Massoud!," referring to Ahmed Shah Massoud, the slain Northern Alliance leader. Many of them streamed out of the city to meet Northern Alliance forces, while men threw away their turbans and cut their beards.

Nusrat, a 21-year-old Kabul resident, said: "All of the people are happy because they are free. All of the people are congratulating each other."

But by noon local time today some people were expressing fears of chaos and a renewal of the civil war that gripped this city before the Taliban takeover in 1996. Young men who had seized guns from Taliban bases roamed the streets, acting as self-declared police officers.

Today Pakistan repeated its insistence that no single group would be able to bring peace to Afghanistan.

"It is our hope that calm prevails and bloodshed is avoided," a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Aziz Ahmed Khan, said at a news conference in Islamabad.

He said a "broad-based multiethnic" government set up under the auspices of the United Nations "would be the best guarantee for peace in Afghanistan." The alliance is made up mostly of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks and the Taliban of the country's dominant Pashtun tribe.

In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said a United Nations presence in Kabul was needed "as soon as possible."

On Kabul's outskirts, women forced into virtually total seclusion under Taliban rule waved excitedly to foreigners. Hundreds of people celebrated in the streets. At least one child flew a kite, an act also banned under the Taliban.

Hundreds of armed men, moving with Northern Alliance troops toward Kabul, were in trucks chanting "God is great!"

A senior Pakistani intelligence official, quoting what he said was a message from the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to his troops on Sunday night, said that the mullah had ordered the withdrawal so that American planes would stop bombing Afghan cities and the Taliban and Northern Alliance could fight on equal terms.

The mood among Northern Alliance troops was jubilant.

A tank unit commander, General Ezmerai, said he remembered retreating down the same road in 1996 as the Taliban advanced on Kabul.

"I'll never forget that time," he said. "Hundreds of tanks driving across the Shamali plain and there was no morale to turn and fight the Taliban. It has been my biggest dream to return to this place."

In Pakistan, which until the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, had firmly backed the Taliban, a senior intelligence official cast the latest developments as a tactical decision by the Taliban rather than a triumph of Islamabad's foes in the Northern Alliance.

"The sweep of the Northern Alliance has not been so much a military victory as a collapse or withdrawal of the Taliban," the official said. "The Taliban leadership seems to have given the message `Get out of the entrenched front lines and save yourself from American bombardment.' "

The official quoted what he said was Mullah Omar's last message to his commanders, delivered through the Taliban intelligence service on Sunday night, as saying: "Defeat and retreat are tests from God, but the mujahid does not fail these tests. Our strength lies in ground warfare, which will be better manifested if we leave the cities and take to the mountains.

"Defending the cities with front lines that can be targeted from the air will cause us terrible loss. Changing our strategy will save the lives of mujahedeen and of our civilians because once the Northern Alliance enters the cities, the bombing from the air will stop. Inshallah, then we will fight the proxies of the infidels as equals."

The Pakistani official said he believed the Taliban forces would first retreat to a base some 12 miles south of Kabul, and then pull farther back toward Kandahar, the Taliban's headquarters.


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