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| Afghanistan |
| Dostum's forces 28 miles from Mazar-e-Sharif |
| 2001-10-11 |
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan Gen. Abdurrashid Dostum said his fighters are 28 miles from the key city of Mazar-e Sharif and struggling to capture the road that leads there. Cut off by land from supplies, Dostum's forces can be reinforced only by helicopters. And those haven't come, at least not yet. In an interview today by satellite phone from inside Afghanistan, Dostum -- one of the Northern Alliance's most celebrated commanders -- offered a portrait of an insurgency that hardly seems poised to topple the Taliban. Even with the new opening provided by U.S. bombardment of Mazar-e Sharif and this week's capture of strategic towns near the city, Dostum is further from his goal than his allies have reported. He has a long list of complaints: no tanks, few trucks, not enough food to eat or clothes to wear, old weapons and insufficient ammunition. With no gasoline to fuel the trucks he does have, he and his men travel by horseback through the mountains. "One thousand horses," he said, "are better than 5,000 Taliban." "On the days we have enough weapons, we fight well," Dostum said. "On other days, there's nothing left to fight with." Even the casualty report he offered suggested a rag-tag guerrilla army waging a 19th-century battle. The dead in recent days, he said, number "20 fighters, five commanders and 60 horses." Still, Dostum and other Northern Alliance commanders are reporting gains that would have been unthinkable only a month ago, including cutting the main Taliban supply line to Mazar-e Sharif. Poised to capitalize on the United States' entrance into a civil war that has been raging for more than two decades, the rebels have embraced a new strategy to oust the Taliban, relying on Dostum to recapture the north and link opposition forces for an attack on the Afghan capital, Kabul. And what the general lacks in supplies, he makes up for in bluster. "If I had more weapons," he said, "I would have seized the north long ago." Dostum returned to Afghanistan from exile this March, agreeing to serve under the charismatic Northern Alliance general, Ahmed Shah Massoud, whom he had betrayed several times. Massoud was assassinated just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and Dostum is now the best known, if not the best equipped, of the Northern Alliance's remaining commanders. Today's interview suggested that some fractures have begun to appear. Asked about promised military aid from Russia, Dostum replied, "It has all gone to General [Mohammed] Fahim," who succeeded Massoud as the rebels' commander in chief. "There has not been a single airlift to me." At the same time, he said, the Northern Alliance is "a good union. Even though there's a diversity of interests, it's a good union." Dostum said he commanded between 15,000 and 18,000 fighters. But other Northern Alliance officials have said he has fewer than 8,000 troops. Numbers vary just as widely for the Taliban forces arrayed against him. Other opposition officials also described the ebb and flow in Dostum's battle. On Monday, Dostum's fighters reported gains of up to 12 miles in Samangan province, claiming they pushed the Taliban defenders out of the mountains and into the town of Samangan. But on Tuesday, according to the Northern Alliance ambassador in Uzbekistan, Dostum's fighters were the ones under attack. "There were many casualties," said the envoy, Mohammad Hasham Saad. Dostum's men "held on to their gains, but did not move ahead." |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |