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Northern Alliance battle plans: 3-pronged attack on Taliban
tehelka.com ^ | New Delhi, September 19 2001 | V K Shashikumar

Posted on 9/20/2001, 1:51:08 AM by AM2000

The anti-Taliban resistance in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance (NA) or United Front (UF), is poised to launch a three-pronged attack on the Taliban. In an exclusive interview to tehelka.com, Dr Abdul Wahidi, foreign affairs advisor to the NA, revealed the battle plan of the opposition forces: they are preparing to launch attacks on the Taliban from three non-contiguous Taliban-Northern Alliance frontlines in the harsh north of the country. With its 15,000 troops, the NA is holding on to its northern enclaves of Badakshan, the Panjshir valley and the Shomali plains north of Kabul.

General Mohammad Fakhim, 52, a former deputy commander and its security and intelligence chief, has quickly assumed charge of the NA following the assassination of Commander Ahmad Shah Masood on September 9 by Osama bin Laden's al Qaida outfit. Fakhim is supervising the operations from the Northern Alliance's Khwaja Bahauddin headquarters on the Tajikistan border. Even though the commanders and troops of the NA are still in a state of shock following the death of their charismatic leader, reports from Northern Afghanistan indicate that the anti-Taliban resistance forces are pawing the ground raring to have a go at Kabul. There is ample support among the cadres of the NA for the American Special Forces that will be used to capture, dead or alive, Osama bin Laden.

Dr Wahidi said, "Our priority is Northern Afghanistan." The strategy is to first consolidate the NA's positions there and win back all the strongholds it had lost to the Taliban. The NA is supported by the Tajiks, Shias, Hazaras and Uzbeks who are main ethnic communities in Northern Afghanistan. Even the Pashtuns in this region, pathological rebels, support the NA. The opposition coalition has many Pashtun commanders in its ranks, such as Haji Quadir and Abdullah Wahidi in the Laghman province.

According to the NA battleplan revealed verbatim to tehelka.com, the attack will be simultaneous and from three different directions:

Masood's death threw the Northern Alliance into complete disarray. The anti-Taliban opposition forces had been held together since 1995 by Masood, who had earned fame by battling the Afghan and Soviet communists. But the loud US announcements of retaliation following the attacks on the World Trade Centre and Pentagon has galvanised the NA commanders, as have the alacrity of the takeover by General Fakhim has stabilised the rank and file of the anti-Taliban forces.

Like Masood, Fakhim is a Tajik from Panjshir Valley. In 1979, he joined an anti-Communist uprising in Panjshir led by Masood. Fakhim, unfortunately, has neither the charisma nor the colossal status of the late "Lion of Panjshir". The French-speaking Masood was a master strategist, a shrewd politician and a hands-on battle commander. To his credit, Fakhim is popular but doesn't possess Masood's magnetic personality.

If the world's attention had not been focused at the moment on Afghanistan, chances are that the tenuous anti-Taliban coalition would have fractured following Masood's death. Thankfully, the self-effacing Fakhim is not facing trouble from some of his more incendiary coalition partners, notably the Uzbek warlord, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, the powerful NA commander in Western Afghanistan, General Ismail Khan, and the Shia commanders of Central Afghanistan.

In the second line-of-command after General Fakhim are two younger regional commanders in their late 30s. Commander Daoud Khan, a Tajik from Takhar province, earlier served as Masood's aide-de-camp and today commands troops in the crucial Farkhar sector of the northeastern frontline; and Bismillah Khan, a tough Panjshiri, is in command of forces in Shomali, north of Kabul.

Even as the military structure of the Northern Alliance has undergone a change, so has its political wherewithal. The United Nations and the international community of nations recognise the anti-Taliban opposition as the legitimate government of the Islamic State of Afghanistan (ISA). Therefore, the NA represents the army of the ISA and the NA's political leaders exercise the political power vested in the government-in-exile. Burhanuddin Rabbani occupies the chair of president and is currently based in Faizabad in the Badakshan province of Northern Afghanistan.

But the real executive power has been vested on those who were close to the late Masood -Yunus Qanuni, and the ISA's acting foreign minister, Dr Abdullah Abdullah. While Qanuni is a Panjshiri Tajik, Dr Abdullah, a former medical doctor, is a Pashtun from Kandahar who was close to Masood since he joined him in Panjshir in 1984. An urbane English speaker, Abdullah has been serving as the NA's diplomatic pointman.

On September 11, even as the terrorist strikes stunned the US, officials from Russia, Iran, Tajikistan and India were scheduled to meet in Dushanbe in Tajikistan to assess the grave crisis that had developed following Masood's assassination. There are no reliable reports confirming whether they actually met, but what is certain is that the international community will perhaps think more actively about giving material and arms support to Afghan opposition.

It is inarguable that on the Afghan battlefield, the best way to eliminate the terrorism-sponsoring Taliban is to supply military hardware to the Afghan opposition. Fresh military supplies must reach the NA before the onset of the terrible Afghan winter in November. This would enable the anti-Taliban opposition to prevent any attack or seizure of the NA stronghold at Faizabad, Badakshan's provincial centre. If the Taliban is allowed to capture Faizabad, the NA's logistical link up with Tajikistan will snap, isolating the Panjshir valley through the winter. That would, in effect, signal the end of any opposition to the Taliban, much to the detriment of the antiterrorist coalition led by the US.


TOPICS: Front Page News; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 9/20/2001, 1:51:08 AM by AM2000
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To: AM2000

Something to really consider...

Point 1
Spies and Terrorists never use their real names. NEVER. The amount of work that went into this last WTC bombing showed an exceptional amount of planning and sophiscation. It is unbelieveable that these people would use their real names.

Point 2
The country that angered Iraq in 1991, was the country that supported the US efforts. That country was Saudi Arabia. It seems to make sense that the large number of terrorists and spies that have been caught and identified all are identified as Saudi Nationals. I wonder if this is an effort to divide any US support with the Saudi Government.

Point 3
My final point. Iraq seems to have their thumb prints over all of this. Directly, due to the equipment and duration and planning, to the indirect such as the preferred nationality of the fake identifications used.

2 posted on 9/20/2001, 1:53:43 AM by vannrox (MyEMail)
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To: AM2000
Memo to the Northern Alliance:

LET'S ROLL!!!

Footnote:

Gee I wonder where the Airborne commandos are going to land?

Is there anyplace in the region, where our troops could land at no risk on secure airstrips and be welcomed as heros by the population?

Gosh I wonder.....

3 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:03:12 AM by TheGoodDoc
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To: vannrox
Interesting, but I still say it doesn't matter who is behind it, take em all out and carve up the Middle East like a turkey.
4 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:08:33 AM by okie_tech
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To: okie_tech
it doesn't matter who is behind it, take em all out and carve up the Middle East like a turkey

If we don't know who's behind it, we can't be sure it's the Middle East, now can we? Yes, it is likely it's them, but if we don't know, we shouldn't just assume. Who knows, maybe we're being set up.

5 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:11:14 AM by AM2000
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To: Sawdring Pericles
.
6 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:14:32 AM by AM2000
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Yes, lets arm the opposition, train them, and give them advanced weaponry. No way that could ever come back around and bite us on the ass.
7 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:14:59 AM by Blackyce
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To: okie_tech
take em all out and carve up the Middle East like a turkey.

The Brits have been there, done that.

8 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:16:59 AM by Lessismore
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To: AM2000
The Northern Alliance have some assets that would be useful for the U.S. - like airbases where special forces can land.

The Northern Alliance knows the language and the terrain.

The Northern Alliance can infiltrate bin Laden's organization and help us find out which cave he is hiding in.

Afghanistan is littered with landmines. The Northern Alliance can help us avoid them.

9 posted on 9/20/2001, 2:28:47 AM by HAL9000
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To: AM2000
We will work with NA........thats an obvious fit. BUT......we gotta take out Ghaddafi and Saddam. hmmmmm ....who else? What about Yemen? Pakistan is a horror too.
10 posted on 9/20/2001, 3:06:21 AM by jwa3
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To: all
I assume the article's information is a diversion.
11 posted on 9/20/2001, 8:38:45 AM by Kerensky
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