Afghan Troops Retake Base From Taliban

The Islamic Taliban militia suffered its biggest reversal since it captured Afghanistan’s capital three weeks ago as soldiers of the deposed government retook a strategic air base north of Kabul, reports said Saturday.

The overnight loss of the Bagram airfield, about 30 miles from Kabul, was an ominous development for the Muslim fundamentalist fighters, because soldiers and artillery belonging to northern Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum backed the assault by troops of the former government’s military chief, Ahmed Shah Masoud.

Dostum and Masoud agreed earlier this month to unite in their fight against the Talibs. The two leaders oppose the fundamentalist movement’s blueprint for a strict Muslim society and advocate instead a moderate, broad-based government for war-weary Afghanistan.

But in a land of shifting alliances and pacts, there had been doubts about the true intentions of Dostum, a former battlefield opponent of Masoud. Dostum commands the largest Afghan military force after the Taliban.

With Bagram air base now in their hands, the allied forces of the ousted government and of Dostum’s militia now have a convenient base from which to launch aerial attacks on Kabul and Taliban positions north of the capital.

Masoud’s battle-toughened troops, made up mostly of ethnic Tajiks, also said they captured the town of Qarabagh, about a 45-minute drive north of Kabul, at 2 a.m. Saturday without a fight.

“Now we’re ready to push them [the Taliban] out of Kabul,” Karim Mohab Rahman, a commander of Masoud’s forces, told Reuters news service. Soviet-made tanks bearing Masoud’s men reportedly rumbled into Qarabagh accompanied by truck-mounted antiaircraft guns and multiple-rocket launchers.

The Talibs retaliated for their latest setback with an air raid on Bagram, but two bombs dropped by a Sukhoi jet hit nearby mud huts instead and reportedly killed several inhabitants.

The Taliban forces, whose hold on the capital they captured Sept. 27 is looking increasingly precarious, appeared to be building new defensive positions about six miles south of Qarabagh and at the same distance south of Bagram on a parallel road leading to Kabul, reports said.

At least twice, Masoud has demanded that the Taliban cede control of Kabul to a U.N. peacekeeping force, but his immediate tactical plans were unclear. Talks last week between the Islamic militia and Dostum kindled hopes that Kabul, badly battered after 4 1/2 years of fighting between rival Afghan factions, might be spared another battle.

Masoud, however, has charged that the Taliban, which he maintains is a Pakistani-financed and -supplied occupation force, is conducting talks to undermine his alliance with Dostum and to buy time to prepare a fresh offensive.