Taliban under heavy fire in Kandahar-tribal chief

QUETTA, (PAKISTAN), Nov 22: Taliban troops defending their main stronghold of Kandahar in Southern Afghanistan have come under heavy fire from US air raids and ambushes by local tribesmen, a leading opposition figure said today.

"They have suffered heavily in the past few days from US bombing and also ambushes by common people," Hamid Karzai, a supporter of former Afghan King Zahir Shah, told Reuters.

"They are being ambushed everywhere," Karzai said by satellite telephone from the central Afghan province of Uruzgan.

It was not possible to get independent confirmation.

Kandahar, the southern city from where the fundamentalist Islamic militia launched its conquest of most of Afghanistan at the end of 1994, is set to be the Taliban’s final stand after their troops began negotiating the surrender of Northern Kunduz.

After 23 years of almost continuous conflict in Afghanistan, Kandahar and the fruit orchards around it are among the most heavily mined areas in the world. The city itself is protected by a gigantic wall and massive ditch.

In less than two weeks, the taliban have been swept out of most of Afghanistan’s main cities, including the capital Kabul, by the Northern Alliance military coalition and by rebellious tribesmen.

The lightning advance by the alliance came after weeks of heavy US air strikes against the Taliban in retaliation for harbouring Osama bin Laden, whom the United States accuses of masterminding September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The fall of Kunduz, where thousands of Taliban fighters are surrounded by the Northern Alliance, would allow the United States to focus its air offensive on the Pashtun tribal belt of the south, where the Taliban draws most of its support.

Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is believed to be in Kandahar and US officials say Bin Laden is in the vicinity.

Local opposition commanders believe Bin Laden is most likely to be hiding in the desert mountains of helmand province southwest of Kandahar.

The Taliban vowed on Wednesday to defend the ancient walled city, around two hours drive from the Pakistani border, and dismissed as propaganda reports that some Taliban commanders in Kandahar have been cutting deals with Pashtun opposition leaders.

Karzai said he had little new information about the militia’s defensive positions around the oasis city, built on the same site as a fort established by Alexander the great during his epic sweep into India.

But he said Taliban forces to the north of Kandahar appeared to be retreating further south. "It seems they are moving further south towards Kandahar, so they are shrinking," he said.

Karzai declined to say whether US special forces, hunting Bin Laden, were operating near his position.

A stream of refugees from the city has been heading to the Pakistani border, with many living in sprawling refugee camps near the frontier.

Karzai also said he had been invited to a UN-sponsored conference in Germany next week of Afghan opposition leaders.

The conference is the first step towards calling a Loya Jirga, or grand council, that would decide on a multi-ethnic post-Taliban Government, possibly presided over by Zahir Shah.

But Karzai, a former Deputy Foreign Minister of a pre-Taliban Government and a nobleman of the Popalzai tribe, said he was not sure he could take the time off from wooing local tribes away from the Taliban.

"I support the idea (of a conference) very much," he said. (REUTERS)

Anthrax claims 5th victim

NEW YORK, Nov 22: A 94-year old woman stricken with inhalation anthrax became the fifth victim of the deadly bacteria which has gripped the US in the aftermath of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks.

The death of ottilie lundgren in a connecticut hospital yesterday has baffled investigators as to how the woman, who stayed at home, contracted the infection.

Investigators are unable to pinpoint the source of the infection. Among the theories being considered are that one of her letters which was infected during sorting by automatic machines with another containing anthrax might have infected her.

Lundgren was thought to be suffering from pneumonia when she was admitted to a hospital in Derby in Connecticut with respiratory problem. But five preliminary tests conducted came out positive for inhalation anthrax.

Officials said they were doing all they could to determine the source of infection and had reportedly visited her apartment after she tested positive and also the beauty salon she regularly used. They were trying to determine the route that her letter followed.

Chief of medicine at the hospital said they had some hope that she might recover considering the rapidity with which the infection was diagnosed but "certainly at her age things did not go as we and her family would have wished."

As a precaution, postal workers who may have handled lundgren’s mail and a niece who looked after the elderly woman were being treated with antibiotics.

The emergency room of the hospital was sealed after another woman brought a packet containing a powdery substance that she considered suspicious but preliminary tests have come out negative.

Lundgren’s case was the first reported in three weeks and officials were worried whether it meant a new series of infections.

Officials said they did not rule out the possibility of exposure to natural anthrax but called it a "remote" possibility.

Two post offices in the area, which is about 128 km from new york, were checked for anthrax two weeks back and authorities urged all 1,500 workers to take antibiotics as a precaution.

Even as the death yesterday raised fresh concerns, an abc television network report said the anthrax discovered in the letter sent to senate majority leader Tom Daschle contained billion, perhaps even a trillion, spores per gram, far more than what the US, Russia or Iraq ever achieved in their biological weapons programmes.

Government officials say that the anthrax sent to Daschle’s office was potent, milled to the right texture to infect human lungs and contained an anti-clumping agent that made the spores float through the air more easily. (PTI)

Net closes on alleged Bin Laden UK deputy: Sources

LONDON, Nov 22: British security sources said the net was closing on an Islamic cleric living in London who had been identified by Spanish investigators as Osama bin Laden’s suspected right-hand man in Europe.

Sheikh Abu Qatada, a Palestinian who moved to Britain in 1993 as a political refugee, was named by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon on Tuesday as the alleged "spiritual leader" of Bin Laden’s Army in Europe.

Qatada yesterday denied the allegations.

The 40-year-old, wanted in Jordan after being convicted in his absence of a series of explosions there, denied he belonged to Al Qaeda and said he had never met with Bin Laden, the prime suspect in the September attacks.

"This is an honour I do not claim. It is a lie," Qatada told Qatar’s Al-Jazeera television in response to a question on allegations that he belonged to Al Qaeda.

He said the Americans and Europeans, frustrated by their military failures in Afghanistan, were trying to use him as a scapegoat to cover up their failures.

The judge named Qatada in an indictment that led to 11 arrests in Spain following a four-year probe into a Europe-wide network of cells suspected of being linked to Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda group.

He said Qatada was visited a number of times in London by Imad Eddin Baraket Yarbas, alias Abu Dahdah, who was arrested in Spain last week for alleged links to Bin Laden and other militants suspected of involvement in the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Garzon also alleged that Qatada received money from some of the men arrested in Spain for transfer to a man arrested in Jordan on terrorism charges.

Security sources in London told Reuters they were confident they could arrest Qatada once tough new anti-terrorism legislation comes into effect within a month. The law will allow indefinite detention without trial of terrorism suspects.

"We’re waiting to see the fine points of the new law but are confident that there’ll be enough in there to detain him. There seem to be grounds to get him on suspicion to commit or support acts of terror in another country," a security source said.

"The Spanish findings certainly provide a compelling excuse to move in on him."

The European crackdown on Al Qaeda links is key to the US-led war against those responsible for the September 11 attacks. Eleven of the 19 men named by Washington as responsible for the suicide hijack attacks had lived in or passed through Britain.

Qatada, who has said he is a victim of anti-Islamic prejudice, was one of 39 individuals and organisations whose assets were frozen last month by the United States for alleged ties to terrorist funding.

Asked if he had ever been in contact with any member of Al Qaeda, he said in Al-Jazeera: "I do not recall meeting anyone who claimed to belong to Al Qaeda organisation."

"Even with Sheikh Osama bin Laden, god keep him and make him victorious over the allies and the infidels in Afghanistan, I had not have the honour of meeting him either in (the Pakistani border town of) Peshawar or anywhere else," he added.

Qatada last month told the BBC that he was only a Muslim who believes in Islam.

"I do not belong to any group or any organisation as such, whether terrorist or Jihadi....I am a Muslim who believes in islam. I believe in Jihad and I believe in the necessity of freeing our nation and liberating it from bondage."

Britain suspended welfare benefit payments to Qatada after a probe into suspected terror links allegedly found 180,000 pounds (259,900 dollars) in a bank account under his name.

Qatada, who lives in West London, was arrested in February on suspicion of terrorism, but was released without charge.

In the BBC interview, Qatada refused to condemn the attacks in New York and Washington that have been blamed on Bin Laden, the prime target of the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

"It is not the size of the action that matters, it is the reason behind it which matters. It would only be a bad act if there were no American bases in Bin Laden’s country," he said, adding that he respected the Saudi-born dissident. (REUTERS)

Afghan Hazaras hope for political voice at last

KABUL, Nov 22: Behind the rubble of destroyed, mine-infested buildings in a corner of Afghanistan’s capital Kabul live the Hazaras, descendants of the armies of Ghengis Khan and a community struggling for a political voice.

Crowded into bullet-scarred houses that line the main street in the southwest of the city and climb a rocky hill, members of this minority ethnic group have faced discrimination by every regime that has come and gone in Afghanistan.

Next week a delegation of Hazaras will join UN-brokered talks in Germany aimed at drawing up a framework for a new ethnically mixed Government to replace the Taliban.

Mending their bicycles on the roadside or sitting at their market stalls, the hazaras of the battered Kabul suburb of Deh-Mazang are allowing themselves the luxury of hope.

"Any move towards peace is good news for us," said Ali Mohammad, who like all Hazaras is easily distinguishable from other Afghans by his oriental features.

"Our leaders have said that they will go to this meeting and I am hopeful about that. I am hopeful we can get a Government that is fair to all of us."

The Hazaras’ centuries-long history of persecution comes right up to the present day.

The Taliban targeted the Hazaras for their Shia beliefs, which the fundamentalist militia’s Sunni Muslim leaders dismissed as not true Islam.

Thousands fled their homes on the central plains of Bamiyan and came as refugees to Kabul when Taliban forces supported by hostile Pakistani and Arab soldiers closed in.

In fighting for control of the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif, Hazara prisoners were said to have been dumped into shipping containers, locked up and left to suffocate.

Hazaras, whose name means "Army of a thousand", are known as resilient fighters, but have usually come out on the losing side.

In Kabul in the early 1990s, when Mujahideen factions divided the city, the Hazara’s Hizb-e-Wahadat Army found itself up against the superior firepower of the fighters of legendary commander Ahmad Shah Masood.

Today, most hazaras in Kabul still live among the ruins of those four years of battle, in houses without running water or electricity.

"Our people are poor, many of them can’t afford to eat. All their houses are destroyed. Our problems never change," said Hussein Sabari, an aide to Hazara leader Karim Khalili.

The Hazaras make up an estimated 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s population, although they say they are more.

Their Army of around 5,000 is loosely affiliated to the anti-Taliban Tajik and Uzbek dominated Northern Alliance.

But it is not their forces who have patrolled the streets of Deh-Mazang since alliance forces took control of Kabul last week.

"The Taliban used to have control of this area and now the Tajiks are here," said Sabari.

"But the Taliban people were mostly foreigners, the Tajiks are our brothers. We hope they will give us the chance to rule this country with them." (REUTERS)

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