Word: kunduz
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Pocked with shell craters and fretted with tank tracks, the road from Taloqan to Kunduz was empty of civilian traffic. In the ditches were the bombed remains of Jeeps, tanks and armored personnel carriers. Now and then a truck jounced past carrying Northern Alliance soldiers to the Kunduz front, which had settled into a tense standoff between Alliance and Taliban forces. Inside Kunduz were some 6,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda troops, many of them Arab, Chechen or Pakistani holy warriors with no place in this world left to go. They had retreated into Kunduz after being routed at Mazar...
...Tales of treachery and travail at Kunduz dominated world headlines late in the week, and Britain's Guardian provided a riveting account of the bizarre negotiations over a Taliban surrender there. According to reporter Luke Harding, the talks between Northern Alliance general Rashid Dostum and Taliban commander Mullah Faizal were held in Dostum's castle near Mazar-i-Sharif, with three uniformed U.S. special forces officers in attendance. "Over cups of tea and biscuits, the terms of the surrender were agreed: all the Afghan fighters trapped in Kunduz would be allowed to go home. The Arabs, however, would be taken...
...outdone, Justin Huggler of London's Independent found himself forced to accept the surrender of a Taliban commander from Kunduz. "He could not find anyone to surrender to. So we bundled him and his retinue of defecting Taliban into the back of our rented van and set off to find a local Northern Alliance commander." All hell broke loose when the convoy came under fire from the Taliban, and again when the defector refused to part with his rocket-propelled-grenade launcher in the chaotic clamor of surrendering Taliban and advancing (and retreating) Alliance fighters on the frontline...
...Alliance from having to fight street-to-street for control over any city. And the fundamentalist movement's demise has come about in large part because many of the local warlords on whose support it had ridden to power simply switched sides. Some of the fighters currently besieging Kunduz as part of the Northern Alliance had been on the Taliban side ten days ago. And once battle is joined many of those inclined to accept a deal may be inclined to simply surrender, easing the Alliance's passage into the city...
...Afghanis themselves, the battle at Kunduz may be a critical moment shaping the post-Taliban order. The various factions of the Northern Alliance are due to meet Monday in Germany with the Pashtun mujahedeen commanders and others who have taken over much of the south, as part of a U.N. effort to broker agreement on a new government. A bloodbath at Kunduz, where some 30,000 mostly Pashtun civilians are reportedly trapped, may sour the atmosphere for Monday's talks. But if large numbers of Afghan Taliban surrender and ultimately find themselves joining with Alliance fighters in facing down...