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Sevunts.com
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The Gazette's Levon Sevunts reports that Northern Alliance fighters are happy with the U.S. change in strategy to include carpet bombing of Taliban positions. U.S. B-52 bombers rained dozens of bombs at hillop Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan yesterday, boosting the morale of anti-Taliban fighters and raising expectations of a major offensive in the next day or so. It seemed that, frustrated by the slow progress and sometime inaccuracy of pinpoint bombing, the U.S. air force decided to resort to the old tried-and-true, carpet bombing. Soldiers of the anti-Taliban United Islamic Front lost count of the bomb drops, looking in awe at the skies as the deafening thunder of explosions rolled through the valley, resonated in the mountains scaling the Tajik border and echoed back. The heavy bombers came in pairs, flying from the southwest. They flew far above the range of Taliban anti-aircraft guns, which stayed mostly silent, realizing the futility of trying to shoot down the B-52s. Only a pair of four thin vapour plumes scarring the bright autumn sky betrayed the presence of the bombers. They circled twice above their target before releasing their deadly load. The bombing started at 7 a.m. and the last bombs fell at noon. "Taliban kabob," said a Russian TV reporter, pointing toward the heavy gray smoke coming from behind the Kala Kata hill range. His joke caused a roar of laughter, sparking wild cheers and applause from anti-Taliban fighters. U.S. jets have bombed the range, not far from Tajik border, almost every day of the past week. In addition to its strategic location - from the range, Taliban gunners control a narrow valley between the Afghan hills and the Tajik border and can check any westward advance by the anti-Taliban forces - Kala Kata has a symbolic importance for the United States. According to local commanders, the hill is occupied by the fighters of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan - Arab, Chechen, Punjabi and Uighur volunteers affiliated with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida. Uzbeks Show No Sympathy Facing them on Puze Pulekhomry yesterday were Uzbek fighters of the United Front, also known as the Northern Alliance. They had little sympathy for their compatriots on the receiving end of the bombing. "They allied themselves with the terrorists and now they are paying the price," said Khal Muhammad, 24, an Uzbek fighter from Taliban-occupied Foryob. In preceding days, U.S. jets had used precision bombs, although several of them fell far short of their targets, and one almost wiped out an entire neighbourhood in the village of Jelamkhor Thursday. Maj.-Gen. Yussuf Muhammad watched the bombing with his Uzbek fighters from forward positions at Puze Pulekhomry. As he walked back to a safer spot, his eyes were red from lack of sleep and the ubiquitous dust. But they belied something else: satisfaction. "They should have been doing this from Day 1," Muhammad said. His troops controlled the Kala Kata hills six months ago, but outnumbered and outgunned they were pushed back farther and farther, until they dug in on the top of Puze Pulekhomry, at the village cemetery. Muhammad, 50, a career officer who rose through the ranks in the former communist army of Afghanistan fighting the mujaheddin, had no illusions about the chances of his forces for a victory. "The Taliban enjoyed numerical superiority, they had better equipment and facilities," Muhammad said. "But now the American bombing has leveled the playing field for us." For the Russian-trained general, one of the best-educated military specialists remaining in Afghanistan, the war has been an endless series of retreats. In 1996 he fled from Kabul to Mazar-e Sharif. Then, in 1998 when Mazar-e Sharif fell to Taliban, he moved his wife and four children to Taloqan. Last winter Taloqan, too, fell. Now, his back to the Tajik border, literally cornered in northeastern Afghanistan, Muhammad hopes that he'll finally put to use everything he learned about launching offensives at the military academy in Kursk, Russia. The intensification of the bombing at Kala Kata has coincided with an attempt by the Northern Alliance to launch the first ground assault at the city of Lalmetaloqan, Takhar province, in northern Afghanistan, timed to follow U.S. bombing of Taliban positions in that area. Speaking in his compound in Dasht-e Qala Saturday, General Mumar Hassan, 58, a powerful local commander and also a veteran of the Soviet-Afghan war, said that he had ordered his troops to attack Taliban positions near the town of Lalmetaloqan to capture it after the U.S. bombardment yesterday. "Every minute we stay put, we lose one year," Hassan said. "As soon as we complete supplying our troops we will attack, before the Taliban are resupplied by Pakistan." "You can't win this war with bombs only, you've got to use ground troops and that's what we intend to do very soon." Window of Opportunity Hassan said that a major offensive on Mazar-e Sharif, the largest city in northern Afghanistan, might start as soon as today, excusing himself to meet two other warlords on the lawn of his compound. A source close to the leadership of Alliance, who asked not to be named, said that the anti-Taliban coalition has a small window of opportunity to start an offensive before the start of the holy month of Ramadan. "Because of the American bombing of Kabul, which has caused a lot of civilian casualties, we are losing the public-relations war in Muslim countries," the source said. "We simply cannot be seen following the American lead. We can't launch an offensive during the Ramadan, which traditionally calls for ceasefires. "However, if we launch an offensive now, we can continue fighting during the Ramadan." The source said that the recent civilian casualties in Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad have cost so dearly in public support that the Alliance's leadership is seriously considering calling for a ceasefire during the Ramadan if no ground offensive is possible by that time. |
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© 2009 Levon Sevunts. All rights reserved. |