Afghan Alliance Claims Gains

Anti-Taliban forces plowed across much of central and northern Afghanistan on Sunday, pushing south and west in a powerful offensive that opposition leaders claimed gave them control of more than half the country.

Northern Alliance troops poured southward from the recently seized city of Mazar-i-Sharif along the country’s major north-south corridor, the Salang Highway, to join their front with other alliance forces besieging the capital, Kabul.

“We have liberated almost the whole of northern Afghanistan,” said Haji Mohammed Mukhaqiq, one of the three Northern Alliance commanders.

Among the regions captured Sunday was the province of Bamian, where two giant statues of Buddha--considered one of the wonders of the ancient world--were destroyed by the Taliban in March, prompting worldwide condemnation.

The Northern Alliance said the Taliban had lost control of four more provincial capitals in heavy fighting, including the alliance’s former headquarters in Taloqan as well as Bamian and the capitals of Badghis and Ghor provinces.

None of these claims could be independently verified. However, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, referring to the Taliban, said on “Fox News Sunday”: “Their people are being killed. Hundreds were killed in this latest Mazar-i-Sharif effort.

“Some of their leadership has been killed,” he added. “And they’re having friction between the Al Qaeda [terrorist network led by Osama bin Laden] and the Taliban.”

According to Northern Alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah, the opposition also was closing in Sunday on the city of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold in the far north. Along with several other districts in the north, Kunduz could fall as early as today, Abdullah said, warning that the Taliban forces “have no escape.”

The Taliban still controlled the western city of Herat, near the Iranian border. But if the opposition’s rapid advances continue, the Taliban forces might soon be reduced to control of Kabul and their ethnic Pushtun heartland in the south and east, where Abdullah predicted that a popular uprising will finally destroy the militant Islamic movement.

“If the Taliban leadership had been wise enough, they would have called for a withdrawal of their forces from northern Afghanistan,” Abdullah told reporters in Jabal os Saraj on Sunday. “But once again, they showed stubbornness, and they paid for it.”

Conflicting Reports on Barricaded Fighters

The continuing collapse of the Taliban followed the opposition’s capture of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday night, during which the Taliban offered “only light resistance” as the fighters fled in disarray, the alliance’s interior minister, Younis Qanooni, said Saturday.

Nonetheless, conflicting accounts emerged Sunday of the fate of more than 1,000 Taliban fighters who had barricaded themselves in a former women’s school after the bulk of Taliban forces retreated.

It was not clear why the fighters were left behind or how many of them were killed or managed to escape during a battle with the opposition. At one point Sunday, Mukhaqiq, the Northern Alliance commander, said by telephone from Mazar-i-Sharif that some of the fighters had fled the grounds of the school in the course of the battle and had holed up in nearby houses, using residents as hostages. Many of the hostages turned on their captors and killed them, he said.

Naqubulla, an aide to Northern Alliance commander Ata Mohammed, said that about 70 of the fighters had been captured and that most of the rest were killed in the battle. Previous reports had indicated that the majority of them were non-Afghans--Arabs, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis--who had come to the city as Taliban reinforcements.

In another interview, however, Mukhaqiq said his troops had killed “probably 1,000” of the soldiers holed up in the school.

Mukhaqiq said that he had allowed elders to try to get the Taliban forces to surrender but that the fighters had refused.

“The Taliban are not taken prisoner,” he said. “They fight to the last moment. They say they are carrying out a jihad [holy war].”

Residents said that in the course of the battle, helicopter gunships were used to fire on the school.

In Jabal os Saraj, Abdullah said nongovernmental agencies such as the International Committee of the Red Cross will be allowed to investigate the incident and the treatment of prisoners.

Elsewhere in Mazar-i-Sharif, men celebrated Sunday by lining up at barbershops to have their beards shaved. Residents reached by telephone said the lines were so long that many customers waited six or eight hours for a shave.

“We’ve all shaved our beards,” one resident said. “It will be nice to kiss each other on the cheek again.” However, he said, women were still wearing the head-to-toe coverings that were mandatory under the Taliban.

Public bathhouses, shut by the Taliban as spiritually corrupt, reopened over the weekend with prices jacked up 12 times--from 15 cents a sauna before the Taliban took control to about $2 on Sunday.

Nonetheless, although many residents of the ethnically diverse city expressed relief at the departure of the Taliban, they admitted to a sense of apprehension about what might follow. A similar change of control in 1997 was followed by several waves of “ethnic cleansing” that left thousands dead.

“Things are quiet in Mazar-i-Sharif, but shops are mostly closed,” said a resident who declined to give his name. “People are scared. They still don’t believe 100% that everyone will be safe. There are different [ethnic] groups on every corner.”

On Saturday night, the Northern Alliance attacked along the Taliban front line at Taloqan, one of several fronts that came under heavy attack by U.S. bombers in coordinated airstrikes.

When the Taliban counterattacked, opposition forces held their fire until “some local forces inside Taloqan turned against the Taliban” around noon Sunday, Abdullah told reporters. The city was “secured” about 4:30 p.m., he added.

The Taliban suffered more than 200 fatalities in Taloqan and nearby districts, Abdullah said. About 30 opposition soldiers died in the fighting, and though dozens of Taliban fighters were taken prisoner, most escaped, he said.

“There wasn’t the coordination we expected from the air,” Abdullah told a news conference. “That was due to other things which were happening at the same time, for instance, to the north of Kabul.”

U.S. warplanes, including B-52 bombers, continued to attack Taliban positions along the front north of Kabul on Sunday as the opposition threatened to launch an offensive. The Northern Alliance has brought in about 5,000 reinforcements to prepare for a move on Kabul, Abdullah said, but he has stressed repeatedly in recent weeks that the opposition plans to stop outside the city. President Bush said in New York on Saturday that the alliance should not enter it.

Forces Still Preparing for Assault on Kabul

Still, the alliance’s plans could change if a Taliban collapse leaves “a power vacuum” in the capital, Abdullah said. Some of the alliance’s faction leaders helped blast Kabul to ruins, killing about 50,000 people, before the Taliban drove the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani from the capital in 1996.

Fears of a new blood bath if the Northern Alliance retakes Kabul, and Pakistan’s long opposition to these forces, led Washington to provide military support for the anti-Taliban forces while trying to restrain them at the same time.

“We will encourage our friends to head south . . . but not into the city of Kabul itself,” Bush said Saturday.

Abdullah said he understood “the political considerations” concerning the alliance’s threatened move against Kabul, but he left no doubt that opposition forces were continuing to prepare for an offensive on the capital.

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Watson reported from Jabal os Saraj and Reynolds from Termez, Uzbekistan. Times staff writer Robert A. Rosenblatt in Washington contributed to this report.