TALOQAN, Afghanistan - In bloody desperation, Osama bin Laden loyalists and other foreign members of a besieged Taliban force in Kunduz are executing Afghan Taliban fighters who advocate surrendering, U.S. and anti-Taliban leaders said Monday.
"People have been found with bullets in their heads, and not in the front," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Some 500 Afghan Taliban fighters tried to surrender Sunday, but foreign Taliban fighters killed 200 of them, according to Zubair, a spokesman for the opposition northern alliance. The other 300 managed to defect, said Zubair, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
He said northern alliance leaders would try one last time to negotiate the surrender of the estimated 30,000 Taliban fighters trapped in Kunduz before taking the enclave by force.
"After that, if they do not accept, then we will be obliged to fight with them," he said.
In other developments, unidentified gunmen killed four journalists in an ambush - none from the United States - as they traveled from Pakistan to the Afghan capital of Kabul, and negotiations continued on forming a new Afghan government.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
"The Afghans cannot expect international assistance ... so long as they fight among themselves," Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar said.
As the showdown drew near for thousands of encircled Taliban holdouts in Kunduz and Kandahar, Rumsfeld warned that American forces would not honor any agreement that includes safe passage for Taliban or terrorist leaders.
Reinforced teams of U.S. commandos intensified their search for bin Laden and other fugitives, and President Bush said the "noose is beginning to narrow."
"The more territory we gain, the more success there is on the ground, the more people we've got looking to help us in our mission," Bush said after a Cabinet meeting.
Outside Kunduz, the northern alliance appeared to be preparing a comprehensive assault on the city. Hundreds of their fighters were moving on foot and in trucks Monday toward the nearby opposition-held town of Taloqan, where thousands of alliance soldiers already awaited action.
Northern alliance tanks also were spotted in surrounding villages, and one towed an armored personnel carrier toward Kunduz. Also seen were 20 mm anti-aircraft guns mounted in the backs of heavy-duty military trucks. Other trucks, piled high with crates of ammunition, sped past.
Nearly 10,000 of the Taliban soldiers in Kunduz are Pakistanis, Arabs, Chechens and other foreigners, many of them linked to bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network.
The northern alliance said those foreign fighters could be harshly punished if they surrendered. "If they accept surrender, then they will be subjected to Islamic law," Zubair said, providing no details.
Facing that, the foreign fighters are trying to prevent Afghan Taliban soldiers from yielding.
Northern alliance commanders are negotiating only with Afghan Taliban leaders and refuse to meet with commanders of foreign Taliban fighters, Zubair said. "They are terrorists, and we will not negotiate with them," he said.
Rumsfeld made clear that any surrender must include the disarming and imprisoning of al-Qaida fighters.
"The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect," he said. "So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner."
The northern alliance, formally known as the United National and Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, and other opposition forces now control every major city in Afghanistan except Kunduz and Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual home in the south.
Taliban leaders in Kandahar reportedly have been negotiating with opposition forces for safe passage out of the city. Would the U.S. military allow Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to leave Kandahar?
"The answer is no, we would not," Rumsfeld said.
The issue might be moot, as there was no sign of a negotiated agreement there.
"The Taliban are regrouping and reinforcing their army on the outskirts of Kandahar," said Syed Nasir Ahmed Alavi, an aide to anti-Taliban warlord Ismael Khan Alavi.
He quoted his intelligence sources as saying Omar was still in Kandahar and that bin Laden could be hiding among sympathetic Pashtun tribes near the Pakistan border.
Rumsfeld cautioned that finding the two remains a challenge, the war on terrorism is "still in its early stages" and the U.S. military's success thus far with only a small number of American casualties does not mean victory will come at a low cost.
"We will not be able to fight an antiseptic war," he said. "You couple people who are willing to do anything in the world to harm people - innocent people - with the potential for very powerful weapons, and you have a problem of enormous proportions.
"So it merits putting lives at risk. Lives are at risk, and lives will be lost."
Knight Ridder Tribune
