Taliban Holdouts Cluster Near a Key Northern City

As many as 2,000 Taliban fighters who retreated from two major defeats in northern Afghanistan have concentrated outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif and have refused to surrender, Northern Alliance officials said Friday.

Different officials provided varying assessments of the danger posed by the fighters, who are quartered in two towns west of Mazar-i-Sharif: Balkh and Chemtal.

Gen. Haji Mohammed Mukhaqiq, one of three military commanders in Mazar-i-Sharif, said the Taliban forces are largely foreigners who were the last holdouts from two large battles in northern Afghanistan--the fall of Mazar-i-Sharif on Nov. 9 and the fall of Kunduz early this week.

Mukhaqiq said that Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, the top commander in northern Afghanistan, has been negotiating with the Taliban commanders and the ethnic Pushtun leaders who are hosting them in Balkh and Chemtal.

“In the end, they will have to surrender. There is no other way,” Mukhaqiq told reporters Friday. “We will have to clean Mazar-i-Sharif of these foreigners. . . . If we don’t clear those two areas, the safety of Mazar-i-Sharif cannot be assured.”

Abdul Wahid, deputy foreign minister for the Northern Alliance, said he is concerned that fighting could flare again. He quoted an Afghan saying: “Beware of the dying donkey’s last kick.”

But at this military checkpoint just six miles from Balkh, commander Asad Khan said he believes that the Taliban soldiers are mostly locals, not foreigners, and that they pose little threat.

“We are from one country,” he said as he stood in a cold rain in the muddy courtyard of the fort-like military post. “We speak the same language. Fighting makes no sense.”

His soldiers didn’t appear to be on alert, concentrating instead on making tea to fend off the damp and cold. Four tanks were parked at the fort, but they were off the road and not facing the direction of potential danger.

Khan, however, said he and his men are ready to respond if the situation changes.

“They have to surrender to us,” he said, thumbs hooked in the leather belt binding his brown corduroy cloak. “If they don’t surrender, we will have to fight.”

Throughout northern Afghanistan, officials are struggling with the question of what to do with the remnants of the defeated Taliban army. Northern Alliance forces are holding as many as 3,000 fighters in the northern city of Sheberghan, in addition to the 2,000 gathered in Balkh and Chemtal. Up to 500 more are believed to have died in the siege of a 19th century fortress near Mazar-i-Sharif that was serving as a detention center.

Mukhaqiq said those who died in the prison rebellion were the most hard-core of the Taliban fighters in the north. And he said it’s possible that small bands of them remain on the loose.

But Gen. Majid Roozi, one of Dostum’s lieutenants, said that at least where the Taliban soldiers in Balkh are concerned, they pose little threat.

“Some of them have relatives or friends [in Balkh and Chemtal] and have hidden themselves in their homes,” Roozi said. “Most have no weapons,” he added, noting that they had been confiscated at a checkpoint between Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif.

As for those already in custody, Northern Alliance officials say the situation is complicated because they would like to turn them over to a third party. Mukhaqiq called on the United Nations to establish a war crimes tribunal.

“We will not kill these people,” he said. “They are in our custody, but there should be justice on the international level.”