Holdout Taliban Rioters Surrender After Three Days of Deadly Darkness

The men emerged slowly from the underground bunker--heavily armed Lazaruses rising from what most people had assumed was their grave.

For days, officials at a prison fortress on the outskirts of this northern Afghan city had tried to flush out what they expected were one or two Taliban fighters still hiding in underground jail cells nearly a week after a prisoner rebellion broke out.

But when the holdouts began to surface, there were more than one or two. In fact, by 9 a.m. Saturday, when a call went out to the International Committee of the Red Cross to help process the prisoners, 13 Taliban fighters had emerged. By the time the Red Cross pulled into the fortress complex at Qala-i-Jangy, six miles from here, there were even more.

“When I arrived,” said Olivier Martin, head of the ICRC office in Mazar-i-Sharif, “I was faced with more than 80.”

The prison rebellion was quashed Wednesday after three days of fighting that included U.S. airstrikes and the death of CIA agent Johnny “Mike” Spann, the first U.S. fatality in the Afghan conflict. On Thursday, three local health workers who entered the underground chambers to collect bodies were shot; one died.

After that, Northern Alliance soldiers repeatedly fired rockets and rifles into the underground jail rooms. They poured in diesel fuel and set it ablaze. On Friday, they began to flood the bunker with the help of a firetruck.

Water accomplished what firepower could not: At 10 p.m. Friday, the first holdouts began to emerge. They had lived in terror and darkness for at least three days.

Witnesses described them as disheveled, distraught and wet.

“Everyone was in poor health, and most of them were traumatized, with absent looks on their faces,” Martin said. “It must have been hell and horror for them.”

Martin said a preliminary count placed the number of surrendered fighters at 83. Eighteen of them were seriously wounded. All will be questioned in coming days.

“We had no idea,” Martin said. “For me, it was a surprise. We were always told by the authorities that it was only two or three at most.”

Martin said he expects there are more corpses to collect in the bunker. Between 400 and 500 prisoners took part in the rebellion. Only the 83 who surrendered Saturday are believed to have survived.

“There are bodies. I don’t know how many, but I do know there must be many,” Martin said.

Many of the holdouts are believed to be from outside Afghanistan, and a portion of those are believed to be members of Al Qaeda, the terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden. The fate of the foreign Taliban fighters is becoming one of the toughest issues to resolve in the aftermath of the Northern Alliance victory in northern Afghanistan.

One Taliban fighter who surrendered Saturday was reported to be an American. He and the others were transported late in the day to an undisclosed detention facility.

Abdul Wahid, the Northern Alliance’s deputy foreign minister in northern Afghanistan, said the prisoners relinquished their weapons--Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers--when they surrendered. However, a more thorough search later revealed that many had managed to hide grenades and small pistols on their bodies.

The prison uprising, which began a week ago, was sparked when a prisoner detonated a grenade and killed Spann as well as himself.