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October 23,
2001
In Afghanistan
US Bombs Miss Taliban,
Hit Near Northern Alliance
By Patrick Cockburn
in Bagram
The
Independent
The first American air raids on the Taliban front
line north of Kabul missed their targets and dropped bombs close
to the positions of their anti-Taliban allies at Bagram airport.
"The bombs were not on target,"
said Elyas, a diminutive soldier fighting at Bagram for the Northern
Alliance who was weighed down with a rocket launcher and a sack
full of rockets strapped to his back. "They fell just in
front of us." Four foreign photographers also present at
the former Russian military airport confirmed that two bombs
had gone astray and had landed close to Northern Alliance troops.
The mishap on Sunday underlined the difficulty
the Americans will have in launching sustained attacks on the
Taliban front line, as the Northern Alliance has repeatedly demanded,
because the front is difficult to identify from the air. It winds
its way through heavily populated villages, orchards and vineyards.
No one was killed by the ill-directed
bombs. The only casualty at Bagram over the past 24 hours was
a 32-year-old soldier called Ahmad who stepped on a mine that
blew off his leg.
General Babajan, the jovial Northern
Alliance commander with a salt-and-pepper beard who is in charge
at Bagram, refused to admit yesterday that there had been a bombing
error by America. His reason was presumably that he did not want
to give it any excuse to stop its attacks on the Taliban.
The aircraft were back in action above
the airport yesterday afternoon. Two F-18 fighter-bombers, flying
at about 15,000 feet but easily visible, circled and then each
dropped a bomb. These exploded a mile or two away, sending up
dark black mushrooms of smoke.
There was the "pom-pom" sound
of Taliban anti-aircraft fire as the F-18s circled again and
twice returned to drop four more bombs. This was not the mass
raids and air support that the anti-Taliban forces had demanded
to clear their way to Kabul, but it was a token of a new direction
in US policy.
These pin-prick bombing raids are unlikely
to worry the Taliban. Some Northern Alliance soldiers, who contacted
their Taliban opposite numbers by field radio, were met with
laughter. One Taliban soldier said contemptuously: "If that
it is all the Americans can do, we can hold out a long time."
Colin Powell, the American Secretary of State, has said that
he welcomed a Northern Alliance advance on Kabul. Previously,
America feared that would offend Pakistan.
Bagram, the site of a city founded by
Alexander the Great on his way through Afghanistan in 329BC,
is important , and not just as a staging post on the road to
Kabul. It still has a Russian-built runway more than two miles
long. If the Northern Alliance could clear the Taliban out of
villages and some hilltop positions to the south of the airport,
from which they can hit the runway with artillery, then the anti-Taliban
forces could use it to fly in military supplies.
But the Northern Alliance might not be
able to do so even with the US giving air support. Its armed
forces consist of two elements: a large number of soldiers in
civilian clothes, often based in their home villages, who act
as a militia and, second, some 12,000 to 15,000 professional
troops in uniform. The latter, presumably essential for a successful
offensive towards Kabul, have only arrived on this front in the
past week.
General Babajan said that, despite the
air war, there had been no serious fighting on his front since
the days when the Taliban attacked after the 9 September assassination
of Ahmad Shah Masood, the Northern Alliance's former military
commander. He added: "No new troops have arrived here. It
is the same men manning these positions who have been here for
the past six years." The death of Masood, the one Afghan
general with charisma and prestige, has hindered efforts to plan
and organise a military attack.
A sign of the Northern Alliance's dependence
on Masood was evident in the office of Mohammed Arif, the deputy
commander of a training camp north of Bagram, who has no fewer
than three pictures of Masood around the desk. One is a sort
of altar surrounded by green artificial flowers.
What seems out of the question is that
military action by America in Afghanistan could be over by the
start of winter in two and a half weeks, as Mr Powell says he
would like. The only active front is around Mazar-i-Sharif, the
biggest city in northern Afghanistan, where the Northern Alliance,
which made advances last week, now seems deadlocked, though it
says the Taliban are not counter-attacking.
Striking evidence that Mullah Mohammed
Omar, the Taliban leader, still has total authority over his
men came yesterday when he sent a message ordering his men to
evacuate UN facilities in Mazar-i-Sharif. His instructions were
immediately obeyed.
The radio
running on optimism
A year ago, Mohammed Ezedyar Alam abandoned
the radio station that he was running in northern Afghanistan
and fled for his life, when the town from which he was broadcasting
was captured by the Taliban. Now, Mr Alam, a gaunt 38-year-old
with a slightly harassed manner, is back on the air after starting
a new station called the Voice of Peace. Its name reflects Mr
Alam's aspirations for the future rather than current reality.
Its broadcasts are almost entirely devoted to war, and, to his
embarrassment, the station is temporarily housed inside a military
barracks in the village of Jabal Saraj.
There is no doubt that in Afghanistan,
radio is king as a source of information. There are no newspapers
or television. People are desperately eager for information.
They feel, rightly, that the next few weeks will determine their
future and the future of Afghanistan.
In the dusty streets of the villages
held by the opposition, there is usually at least one man with
his ear pressed to a radio. A silent crowd often collects around
him, listening intently to the news. The most popular stations
are the BBC, Voice of America and German radio, all broadcasting
in Dari, a language akin to Iranian, as well as Radio Iran.
Mr Alam, working with a staff of 15,
has been on the air for just a week, but already local people
speak highly of his broadcasts, which go out for one and a half
hours twice a day. "I think that the best news is on Voice
of Peace," said a soldier in camouflage uniform who was
buying a radio in a small shop.
The day we spoke, the main news on the
radio was about the opposition advance on Mazar-i-Sharif, the
largest city of northern Afghanistan. Mr Alam, who knows the
city well, drew us a small map indicating the main lines of advance
by General Rashid Dostum and his deputy, Ata Mohammed. He said:
"Our other items were about the bombardment of Kabul, 150
Taliban defecting, and [former Afghan] King Zahir."
Mr Alam's career as a radio journalist
has required some rapid changes of location. Last year, he was
chased out of the north-eastern town of Taleqon when the Taliban
took it. A little earlier, they had briefly taken Charikar, north
of Kabul, where Mr Alam was previously based, and had destroyed
all his station's equipment before they withdrew.
For the moment, the range of Voice of
Peace is limited, but Mr Alam hopes that, by putting a new antenna
on a nearby mountain top, he will soon be able to broadcast to
Kabul. US bombers have destroyed Radio Shariat, the main Afghan
station, and only a few provincial Taliban radios are still operating.
Mr Alam's radio has also just broadcast
a fascinating scoop. It reports that in retaliation for the US
and British air strikes, the Taliban have banned the teaching
of English in Afghanistan, and ordered all English language schools
be closed. Those who continue to teach English will be severely
punished.
Despite the Taliban's suspicion of educational
establishments in general, there has been a keen appetite to
learn English, even in small villages, among Afghan students
who believe that knowledge of the language is necessary for emigration.
Small private schools have flourished.
The Taliban's action against English
is in keeping with its tradition of banning cultural phenomena
of which it disapproves. When it captured Kabul in 1996, it immediately
prohibited television, video, satellite TV and music, along with
all games including football and even kite-flying a favourite
pastime in Afghanistan. Some Taliban militants even strangled
songbirds, often kept as pets, deeming them to be a distraction
from religion.
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