Northern Alliance

The sudden fall of Kabul may be a great victory for the U.S.-led coalition, but it presents new threats, which may not be easy to handle. In humanitarian terms, this is good news. Supplies now can reach most of Afghanistan's population before winter. The crumbling of Taliban power happened more quickly than expected, perhaps too quickly. Looting and summary executions have been reported in Mazar-i-Sharif, highlighting the need for a rapid introduction of a peacekeeping force.

This post has been updated. See notes below. KABUL, Afghanistan - Members of Afghanistan's warring sides gathered near Paris on Thursday to begin informal talks about the country's future as U.S. and NATO forces pull out. It was the first time that senior figures in the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami insurgent groups met with Afghan government officials and members of the former Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban for years. Organizers of the two-day gathering, which is being hosted by a French think tank, hope it will generate helpful discussions, but have said there will not be negotiations for a peace deal.

Afghanistan's opposition forces--some charging Taliban tanks on horseback--pressed their offensive on strategic Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday, capturing a key hilltop and moving their southern front to within 10 miles of the northern city. "I hope we will take the city in four to five days," said Haji Mohammed Muqiq, interior minister for the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. "This is war. We can't be certain if we will take the city. But that is our desire." In Washington, Marine Gen.

The Taliban's on-again, off-again approach to negotiations on a political settlement appears to be on again. Or so it seems from the announcement that it will open an office in Qatar to have a secure "address" (this seems to be the prevailing diplomatic term of art) from which it can participate in talks. Even those optimistic about the prospects for a deal robust enough to actually end the war in Afghanistan are treading warily, lacing prognostications with caveats. And rightly so in light of what has happened in the past.

Impatient with a U.S. bombing strategy that they believe is designed to prevent their advance to Kabul, anti-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan have decided to go it alone and launch a large-scale offensive on all fronts. If the Northern Alliance succeeds in mounting an offensive and seizing the capital, it would be a major defeat for the Taliban, but it could also complicate U.S. policy, which seeks a broader coalition government for Afghanistan.

Stunned by the swift fall of Afghanistan's capital city, Pakistan appealed Tuesday for a quick withdrawal of the victorious Northern Alliance army and installation of a U.N.-sponsored peacekeeping force to fill the vacuum left by fleeing Taliban troops. "Pakistan holds the view that the Northern Alliance forces must not occupy Kabul," Foreign Ministry spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan said.

As U.S. warplanes stepped up airstrikes in northern Afghanistan, anti-Taliban forces claimed Tuesday that the front-line bombing had helped them score significant gains in their campaign to capture the symbolically important city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Officials of the opposition Northern Alliance said their troops had advanced to within six miles of the northern city, which three anti-Taliban groups are approaching from the west, south and east.

The landmark agreement to bring peace to Afghanistan came under attack Thursday from several old guard commanders of the Northern Alliance, which won the dominant share of power in an interim government. Northern Alliance dissenters included Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, commander Ismail Khan in the western city of Herat and at least two alliance leaders in Kabul, the capital.

Opposition forces battled their way into the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday, sending Taliban forces fleeing in a conquest that marks the biggest victory in the monthlong war in Afghanistan. By this morning, residents said that the flag of the opposition forces was flying throughout the city and that music--long forbidden by the Taliban--was blaring in the streets. The Northern Alliance's radio station, Radio Balkh, was back on the air.

Northern Alliance forces moved into the Taliban's last stronghold in northern Afghanistan on Saturday as hundreds, perhaps more than 1,000, defectors poured out of the city of Kunduz and surrendered tanks, artillery and other weaponry. At least some of those who surrendered were hard-line foreign Taliban, whose fate has been the focus of intense speculation and negotiation for days.

The supplicants had come from all over the north of Afghanistan. Bowing as they made their way to the front of the ornate reception room, they bent one by one to kiss the hand of power. Gov. Atta Mohammad Noor, the bushy beard of his days as a rough-hewn mujahedin commander long since replaced by fashionable stubble, had the satisfied look of a man receiving his due. Atta, whom some critics call the personification of Afghanistan's deeply entrenched warlord culture, represents a quandary for the nations that supply the country with tens of thousands of troops and billions of dollars in aid. The United States and its allies are considering ways to skirt the corruption-tainted central government and invest local and provincial officials with more authority.

As the U.S. government lays the groundwork for war against Iraq, the Bush administration must come to grips with the consequences of alliances with local forces that show little respect for the laws of armed conflict -- in particular, for the treatment of prisoners of war. Failure to do so in Afghanistan resulted in the execution of hundreds of captured combatants and the imprisonment of thousands of others in life-threatening squalor. Situations like Afghanistan, in which the U.S.

A northern Afghan warlord admitted Friday that 200 Taliban prisoners died last year while being transported in shipping containers, some by suffocation, but he said the deaths were unintentional and mostly caused by disease and injuries suffered in heavy fighting. Reports that as many as 960 captured Taliban fighters suffocated after they were crammed into unventilated metal shipping containers began emerging late last year.

Osama bin Laden personally ordered the assassination of Afghan opposition leader Ahmed Shah Masoud days before the Sept. 11 attacks, a former senior Taliban official said. It was the first time a Taliban insider has discussed the terrorist mastermind's role publicly. Masoud, military chief of the Northern Alliance, was mortally wounded Sept.

Frank Lindh, the father of American Talib John Walker Lindh, dares to compare his son to Nelson Mandela ("Lindh Pleads Guilty, Agrees to Aid Inquiry," July 16). After his son pleaded guilty to fighting for the Taliban, Lindh senior was quoted as saying, "I told John ... that Nelson Mandela served 27 years in prison. He's a good man, like John." I'm personally offended by this ludicrous comparison. Mandela went to prison for opposing a regime that robbed him, and all black South Africans, of their basic human rights.

Afghan flags flew at half-staff throughout the country and radio programs were banned from playing music during a national day of mourning Tuesday for slain Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir, even as many Afghans expressed doubts that his killers would be caught. In particular, many of Qadir's fellow ethnic Pushtuns said they believed that the case would be treated much like that of Air Transportation and Tourism Minister Abdul Rahman, who was slain Feb. 14.

The crisp new fatigues were a bit big for Zikr Ullah's gangly body, so he had to pull the web belt in all the way to the last notch. A friend tried to smooth out the straight-from-the-box creases at the back but gave up. The Iranian-made uniform was one of thousands that the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance has been handing out over the past few days to soldiers who have spent years fighting in whatever they happened to be wearing.

Hours before U.S. bombs and missiles began raining on Afghanistan, anti-Taliban forces at Bagram air base were readying for a long fight with their enemy, vowing they were willing to die for their cause. Officials of the opposition Northern Alliance said they plan an attack on several fronts once the U.S. air campaign is over. But they also spoke of their fears of heavy casualties, both military and civilian.

When Sept. 11 dawned here, charismatic Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Masoud was stashed in a refrigerator at a Tajikistan morgue--killed 48 hours earlier by Al Qaeda assassins. His death was a desperate secret. A cadre of close aides and officers hid his body--and the truth--while his outnumbered resistance fighters clung to tenuous positions under relentless attack by Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

The assassination of an Afghan rebel leader 48 hours before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was part of a strategic plan by Osama bin Laden to expand his influence into Central Asia, according to American and Afghan government sources. Analysts initially believed that the killing of Ahmed Shah Masoud, head of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, was part of Bin Laden's preparations for Sept. 11--a move to deprive the U.S.