Afghan Militia Reportedly Losing Ground It Gained

Former Afghan government military chief Ahmed Shah Masoud has rolled back the Taliban militia that drove him from Kabul two weeks ago, taking two towns and possibly further territory, reliable sources said Sunday.

They said Jabal os Saraj, the Taliban front-line headquarters town at the mouth of the Salang Pass through the Hindu Kush mountains and a two-hour drive from Kabul, fell Saturday.

Masoud then captured Charikar, a 30-minute drive south of Jabal os Saraj, after a fierce five-hour battle later in the day, the sources said.

The sources, who asked not to be identified, said a town on the highway about a 40-minute drive north of the capital was empty and that forces of the mostly ethnic Pushtun Taliban were massing to the south of it.

It was not clear if Masoud’s forces were near the town, but the sources said people in Charikar were expecting a counterattack.

Taliban officials in Kabul strenuously denied losing any territory, but fighters said a second road north was closed to civilian traffic at the outskirts of the capital because Masoud’s largely ethnic Tajik troops were in hills above it.

They said Bagram, the government’s main air base 30 miles north of Kabul, was still under Taliban control but that there was fighting around it.

Masoud’s advance, less than a week after his forces ended the Taliban siege of his Panjsher valley fortress, was a stunning reversal for a militia that had swept all before it in two years of existence.

The Taliban have taken power in about three-quarters of Afghanistan since the movement was born in refugee camps in Pakistan.

But Masoud, who won a reputation as one of the country’s best guerrilla generals with his defenses of the Panjsher against Soviet troops in the 1980s--when Moscow backed a Communist government--would seem to have them rattled.

In addition to his push down the main road from the Salang, he has also orchestrated a series of hit-and-run attacks well behind the front lines, some of them as close as nine miles from Kabul.

He sent envoys to local commanders who had joined the Taliban and persuaded them to return to his side, and these fighters cut the main road north of the capital, local people said.

Masoud’s own forces pounded Bagram and appeared to control most of the area around it, and witnesses said the Taliban had launched several airstrikes in a bid to dislodge them.

The attacks, reminiscent of his tactics in the 1980s, have clearly got the Taliban worried. In sharp contrast to genial conversations with reporters earlier, some Taliban on the road have become aggressive.