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| Afghanistan |
| Northern Alliance holds war council. Talibs continue blather. |
| 2001-10-29 |
In Islamabad, Pakistan, Taliban Ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef said the first phase of the American military campaign ``had achieved no significant achievement that the Pentagon wished to achieve, except the genocide of Afghanistan people.'' Afghan opposition forces are complaining that U.S. bombing is too light to drive out Taliban forces defending Kabul and the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Unhappy at the pace of efforts to capture Taliban-held territory, key opposition commanders assembled for a five-hour session to sketch out a major offensive on Mazar-e-Sharif, opposition spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said in a telephone interview. Commanders also talked of joint offensives on the surrounding provinces of Balkh and Samangan, Nadeem said. Present, he said, were longtime figures in the opposition's long-stalled struggle: Uzbek leader Rashid Dostum, Shiite Muslim leader Mohammed Mohaqik and Atta Mohammed, commander of deposed Afghan president Burhanuddin Rabbani. Nadeem said he had reports the Taliban had reinforced defenses in Balkh and Samangan provinces near Mazar-e-Sharif with 2,000 more troops. Moving forward would take heavy U.S. air support, he said. ``For the new operation, when it happens, we will need American help,'' the opposition spokesman said. Meanwhile, the supreme leader of Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar, warned the United States that it will learn a ``tougher lesson'' in Afghanistan than the Soviet Union did. Omar told the Algerian newspaper El Youm that Taliban forces had not yet begun the ``real war against the Americans because of their technological power.'' Once the ground war begins, he said, America will lose its edge. In that case the real war will never begin because our technological power is just as pronounced with our ground troops. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |