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Militia ready to handover Arab, Pak fighters
Taliban agree to surrender Kunduz, but fighting rages

BANGI, AFGHANISTAN, Nov 22: Tanks rolled across the front line and Taliban shells crashed near refugees fleeing the besieged city of Kunduz today, just as the Northern Alliance announced the Taliban fighters there had agreed to surrender.

Details of the apparent surrender agreement remained murky, and neither Taliban fighters inside Kunduz or Alliance soldiers making a sudden drive to capture the city seemed aware of it.

Kunduz is the last stronghold held by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan after the Islamic militia abandoned the capital Kabul and most of the country this month.

Alliance commander Atta Mohammed said by satellite telephone from the town of Mazar-e-Sharif that the surrender came late this afternoon in a meeting with top Taliban commanders, including Deputy Defence Minister Mullah Fazil.

"We told them, you are safe. We can transfer you to your provinces,"’ Mohammed said.

He said the Taliban agreed to hand over the Arabs, Pakistanis and other foreign fighters in Kunduz, but didn’t say how soon. He said he believed the Taliban would be able to persuade the foreigners to surrender because "the Taliban are in the majority and the foreign fighters are in the minority."

Even as Mohammed announced the surrender, fighting raged around Kunduz after a lull that had accompanied the talks.

Northern Alliance fighters streamed toward the front line in trucks, tanks and on foot, and commanders already at the front led troops on mountain paths closer to Taliban positions. Alliance forces fired artillery and rockets toward the city.

"When we conquer Kunduz, make sure you get some of the cars," one Commander told a line of men trudging through the dust and mud of an abandoned front-line village.

The Taliban responded with their first mortar attack in days, sending shells onto a heavily trafficked front-line road out to Kunduz.

Refugees streaming out of Kunduz by foot, donkey and car dashed for cover, some women in head-to-toe white shrouds flapping around them. One group of women, confused, dived into a ditch exposed to the incoming mortar fire, their fingers tearing desperately at the dirt as shells pounded around them.

"The United States is bombing and the people are escaping," said refugee Mahmedi, breathless and too much in a hurry tost up to talk. "The city is empty."

Refugees said they were escaping both the anger of foreign fighters trapped in the city and the US bombs.

Several refugees said US bombs hit three mud houses in front-line village Tuesday, killing many civilians. One refugee, who said he helped bury the dead, put the toll at 40. Their report could not be confirmed.

The US warships have joined in the hunt for Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda men by stopping and searching vessels leaving Pakistan to prevent their escape.

American commandoes inside Afghanistan now numbering a few hundred have set up a few check points to block the movement of supplies and trap fleeing Taliban and Al Qaeda troops while US aircraft continued to pound Kunduz and Kandahar.

Amidst conflicting reports of a deal for the surrender of Kunduz, the militia’s last bastion in the north, the Alliance moved their forces saying they were ready to launch an all-out offensive if Taliban fighters who included nearly 3,000 Pakistanis, Arabs and Chechens failed to give up before the end of the day.

The Northern Alliance forces yesterday had given time till this morning for Taliban fighters to surrender.

The Northern Alliance claimed that most of the militia fighters in Kunduz had agreed to a surrender during overnight negotiations between anti-taliban forces and representatives of the militia in Mazar-e-Sharif.

"Tomorrow we will launch an attack from four sides if they do not surrender," top Northern Alliance Commander Daoud Khan was quoted as saying.

However, the Taliban denied having reached any such deal. "The office of Mullah Omar (Taliban supremo) strongly denied that and Army chief Akhdar Othani said the information was totally false," Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network correspondent reported from Afghanistan’s southern city of Spin Boldak.

Reports reaching here said the main hitch in Taliban surrender was the fate of foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden.

Fighting broke out this morning between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban militia at Maidan Shar near Kabul.

Afghan Islamic Press reported that coalition forces bombed the mountains on the outskirts of Kunduz and in Kandahar and in Pakhtia provice injuring three.

US President George W Bush said the war in Afghanistan is just the beginning and the campaign against terrorism and the countries that sponsor it will continue until all threats are eliminated.

"There are other terrorists who threaten America and our friends, and there are other nations willing to sponsor them," Bush said yesterday on the eve of thanksgiving without identifying the countries.

"We will not be secure as a nation until all of these threats are defeated. Across the world and across the years, we will fight evil ones, and we will win," Bush said addressing the elite special forces of the 101st airborne division in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Warning nations against harbouring and funding terrorists, he said "we fight the terrorists and we fight all of those who give them aid. America has a message for the nations of the world.

"If you harbour terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you are a terrorist, and you will be held accountable by the United States and our friends," Bush said. (Agencies).

Documents show Al Qaeda trained ultras for Kashmir

WASHINGTON, Nov 22 : Documents left behind by Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network in haste in Kabul recently describe the kind of training terrorist recruits from around the trouble spots in the world, including Kashmir, received in the camps in Afghanistan.

One document says Al Qaeda "is doing military education and introduction to different kinds of weapons for the supporters of Afghanistan, and also military training to recruits from different countries," media reported here.

The text in several notebooks shows how Al Qaeda instructed recruits in various types of weapons and bombs, beginning with assault rifles and ending with instructions for making exposives, ‘the Washington Post’ said.

Most revealing from the hundreds of papers, said the Post, was the extent to which Afghanistan had become the base for a global network of radical Islamic groups stretching from the Middle East through Central Asia to the Far East.

One 26-page booklet appears to be a primer on Al Qaeda and its sympathisers. One page lists various militant groups. Among them are "Jehad militants" from Pakistan, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

Also listed but unnamed are "groups from Kashmir, Indonesia, Somalia, Burma, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan."

The list includes Egyptian Islamic Jihad Movement, Libyan Jihad Fighters Movement, Abu Sayyaf’s Separatist Movement from the Philippines, and a group called Abu Al Hasan Al Ansar.

"They (terrorists) should know non-verbal communications, code words, symbols and other kinds of communications used in hard times," the post said quoting the text.

For recruits to Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain, the text says, "militants should know how to cross peaks which are not easy to climb. A militant crossing a mountain should put his full body weight on his two feet evenly and walk slowly."

One Arabic language article describes how in 1999 Bin Laden received Russian anti-aircraft rockets from Bulgaria and how the rockets were smuggled through Pakistan with the help from "Albanian separatists who are fighting in Southern Serbia."

The secruits came from places as far Aqart as Egypt and Chechnya and Burma. Once in Afghanistan, they received a heavy dose of Bin Laden’s anti-American view of the world.

The documents also reveal that foreign terrorists persuadud Taliban to destroy the Buddha statues. (PTI)