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Posted on 11/19/2001 3:29:57 PM PST by blam

MONDAY NOVEMBER 19 2001

Refugees tell of frenzied killing in besieged city

BY IAN COBAIN IN HAMIR HABAD

THE nightmarish reality of life in the last Taleban stronghold in northern Afghanistan began to emerge yesterday as a steady trickle of refugees slipped across front lines from the besieged city of Konduz.
As US bombers intensified attacks on Taleban positions before a push into Konduz by the Northern Alliance, it appeared that the city had descended into a frenzy of mass murder, mutilations and beatings. Some refugees told of civilians forced to dance across minefields by Taleban troops who emptied Kalashnikov magazines at their victims’ feet; others of young men dragged into the street and shot for no apparent reason.

Estimates of the number of people massacred since the city was encircled a week ago vary wildly, but some put the figure as high as 350. The number includes about 100 teenage Alliance recruits mown down after they blundered across Taleban lines, scores of civilians shot for dissent, and up to 150 Afghan Taleban troops killed by Uzbek militants led by a former Soviet paratrooper.

All refugees agreed that the worst outrages were committed by the so-called touris khareji — foreign “tourists” in the Taleban’s ranks, many of them trained by bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, who are attacking Afghan Taleban anxious to surrender.

“It is like nothing on earth in there,” said Zekerulla Merzaman, an ethnic Tajik farmer who crossed the front line towards the Alliance-held city of Taloqan with his wife and eight children, his worldly possessions on a donkey. “They are like madmen. They do cruel things like making people jump around in minefields. I saw them do this to seven people. No mines exploded, but the people were all crying . . .

“Many of the local Taleban troops have been shot by the foreigners because they were negotiating to surrender. These foreigners put guns into people’s mouths and make people walk around with thorns in their shoes. God willing, it will soon be over.”

Mr Zekerulla, 45, believes he was allowed to escape only because he lost his right arm fighting the Soviet forces 14 years ago, and so cannot join the anti-Taleban struggle.

Ghulam Sakhi, a Konduz shopkeeper, walked across the 400 yards of no man’s land unmolested. “Words cannot describe Konduz,” he said. “Guns are going off all the time, the Taleban are kicking down people’s doors, dragging out their sons and shooting them in the street, and there is fighting between bands of Taleban every day and night. They are still enforcing Sharia (Islamic law), cutting off the hands of people accused of being thieves.”

The 220,000 population of Konduz has been swollen by refugees from the largely Pashtun villages around the city who are taking their chances with the Taleban rather than face the Northern Alliance, whose fighters are mainly ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks. Food and water are said to be plentiful, but some of the refugees in the city are said to have begun eating their donkeys.

Mullah Fazil, the one-legged Kandahari who leads the Taleban in the city, is said to have all but lost control of the Chechens, Arabs, Pakistanis, Punjabis, Indonesians and Uighur Muslims from Xinjiang in western China who have been fighting beside the Afghan Taleban.

Some of the worst atrocities are attributed to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a militia whose estimated 2,000 fighters are led by Juma “Jumaboy” Namangani, a former Soviet paratrooper who fought the Mujahidin in the 1980s and returned to Afghanistan as an Islamic fundamentalist in 1993. There are reports that his men killed 150 Afghan Taleban who were trying to surrender to the Alliance on Friday.

The surrounded Taleban forces offered yesterday to surrender Konduz if the Northern Alliance spared the lives of foreign fighters, Alliance commanders said. The Taleban offer was conditional on UN representatives witnessing the surrender, Mahidullah, an Alliance leader in Taloqan, said. There was no firm word whether the Alliance had accepted the offer, which was reported to have been made by Hajji Omar, brother of a Taleban commander in Konduz.

The Alliance is encouraging Afghan foes to lay down their arms, but its officers have said they have given “explicit orders” to shoot all foreigners.

Dozens of B52s yesterday dropped 500lb bombs on the Chogha Mountains east of Konduz, while F/A Hornets also circled the skies, dropping laser-guided bombs. The Taleban appeared to fire anti-aircraft guns at one of the B52s. The Alliance called up a few ageing Soviet T55 tanks to bombard Taleban positions, but there was no other movement by the 15,000 to 20,000 troops led by General Muhammad Dawood Khan.

Downing Street refused to respond to questions why the coalition was not acting to prevent a massacre in Konduz. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said he would not answer questions about a hypothetical situation.

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