Taliban Won’t Give Up Kandahar, Official Says

In a remarkable meeting with a large group of foreign journalists, a spokesman for the Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, vowed that Kandahar would be defended and emphatically denied reports that negotiations were underway for the surrender of the movement’s spiritual capital.

“This is propaganda,” said Taib Agha, who traveled from Kandahar to meet more than 100 journalists in this border town 60 miles away. “We’ll defend our nation, our religion and our people,” said the 25-year-old spokesman, who used quiet but fluent English to make the movement’s points.

His comments came amid reports that tightly guarded talks were indeed being held to broker the surrender of Kandahar, the Taliban’s southern stronghold, according to sources both within the Taliban and with close ties to the movement.

The withdrawal of the Taliban from Kandahar would be seen as tantamount to its demise as a legitimate ruling force, so every move in that direction is both delicate and highly contentious within the movement.

Many are convinced that the negotiations hinge on the outcome of the Taliban battle in the northern city of Kunduz, where a large contingent of Taliban fighters is encircled by the troops of the Northern Alliance. The talks center also on the difficult problem of to whom to hand power.

Taliban sources interviewed here indicated that the movement is split: Hard-liners talk about fighting to the last man, but others see a future for themselves in Afghanistan. Among the hard-liners are said to be a limited number of foreign fighters from Arab countries, Chechnya and Pakistan who form the corps of troops most loyal to Osama bin Laden.

Bin Laden Contact Lost Now, Regime Claims

During the course of Wednesday’s news conference, Taib called Bin Laden a close friend of the Taliban and defended the movement’s decision to offer him sanctuary. But Taib claimed that the Taliban hierarchy had lost contact with the Saudi exile in the weeks since the U.S.-led bombing campaign began Oct. 7.

The outcome of this power struggle will determine whether the Taliban chapter of this troubled country’s history will end quietly, in a peaceful hand-over, or with more fighting and bloodshed. American special forces are known to be operating in the region around Kandahar.

Reports of the talks are so closely held that it is hard to tell how far they have progressed. However, the resolution of the situation in Kandahar is tightly linked to Kunduz, according to Taliban sources. The defeat or surrender of the Taliban forces in Kunduz would seriously weaken the hard-liners within the Taliban ranks who are said to be hanging on to the hope of a counteroffensive.

There were contradictory reports about conditions in Kandahar, with some describing the city as nearly empty and Taliban officials saying that the city was functioning normally. The truth appeared to lie somewhere in between.

“The common people are not in the city, but many fighters have come over the past week,” said Hamdullah Hafeez, who held the job of deputy foreign secretary for the Taliban until it abandoned the national capital, Kabul, early last week.

No Taliban official was prepared to say how many of the movement’s troops were in Kandahar. Hafeez talked of “more than 1,000,” while Taib said simply, “There are enough.”

Taliban officials and those with no direct connection to the movement claimed that there were few Arab, Chechen and other foreign fighters in the city.

“About 1% are foreigners,” Hafeez said.

At least three figures engaged in the negotiations appear to be key to the future of southern Afghanistan. They include a wealthy opium smuggler, a former moujahedeen fighter and a tribal chief who served as a diplomat in Pakistan for several years. All have ties to the Taliban and are therefore trusted by its leaders, but they also support a loya jirga, the traditional tribal council used to pick a new leader.

Also in the mix is the man who has been the movement’s supreme leader, Mullah Omar. Wednesday’s news conference left little doubt that Omar favors fighting to hold on to Kandahar.

Of the three involved in the talks, the best known is opium smuggler Haji Basher, said to be one of the wealthiest men in Afghanistan. Like all the people involved in the discussions, his ties to the Taliban go back to the early days of the movement’s rise to power. He drove Omar to Helmand province and introduced him to local commanders and government officials, giving Omar a needed access to a source of support.

“He gave Mullah Omar men and guns and money,” said Abdul Samad, a 28-year-old opium smuggler who fought with the Taliban on several occasions during the past few years but left Afghanistan for Pakistan after the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Taliban Links Seen as Aiding Opium Trade

Later, Basher became a financier of the Taliban movement, a role that almost certainly helped him to run his opium business, which could not have operated without the Taliban’s tacit approval, Samad said.

A second key figure is Abdul Khaliq, a former Afghan consul to Pakistan in the period before the Taliban came to power. He is a member of the Noorzai clan, one of the largest groups in the Durrani tribe, which dominates southern Afghanistan. A member of a wealthy land-owning family that owns half of Farah province in southwestern Afghanistan, Khaliq has some powerful commanders among his relatives, and his family has strong ties to the Taliban.

Last week, Khaliq began sending tribal leaders as emissaries to talk to Taliban leaders in Kandahar to persuade them to negotiate a peaceful transition rather than risk a battle with tribal troops. So far, his delegations have made little progress, but talks are ongoing.

The third player is Mullah Naquibullah, a respected commander and also a Muslim cleric, who fought against the Soviets when they ran the country in the 1980s. When the Taliban took Kandahar in November 1994, he was the first to turn over his guns to them and declare his loyalty, an act that seems to have earned their trust.

The Pakistani government took all but the final step in the Taliban’s total isolation from the outside world by closing the Afghan regime’s remaining consulates in Peshawar and Quetta. That move left the Taliban’s embassy in Islamabad as the movement’s lone remaining mission, and even that one is restricted.

Earlier this month, Pakistan ordered the ambassador, Abdul Salam Zaeef, to cease conducting his frequent high-profile news conferences, which had gradually turned into propaganda exercises laced with anti-American rhetoric. The embassy itself technically remains open.