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| Afghanistan |
| Ismail Khan: Ghor and Bagdhis will fall within a week |
| 2001-10-04 |
The Taliban's hold on power in Afghanistan appeared to be slipping Thursday, amid growing signs of internal rebellion and stepped-up external military and diplomatic pressure. Top opposition commander Ismail Khan told AFP that Afghans in the western provinces of Ghor and Bagdhis were rising up against their hardline Taliban rulers and predicted both provinces would fall within a week. "The most important fact is that civilians in these two provinces are rising against the Taliban. They do not want to be under Taliban rule," said Khan, one of the most powerful commanders fighting the Taliban. Any opposition advances in Ghor and Badghis threaten the western city and province of Herat, close to the Iranian border. Khan said residents in Herat were ready to rise up, and had begun writing "Death to the Taliban" on walls around the town in a major show of defiance. Khan estimated that as many as 10,000 civilians in Ghor and Herat had access to weapons left over from the 1979-89 Afghan war against Soviet occupation,and said men were enlisting in his militia army in unprecedented numbers, swelling his force from 3,000 to just 5,000. Since capturing Herat in 1995, the ethnic Pashtun dominated Taliban have never been at ease in the mainly ethnic Tajik and traditionally moderate city. |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |