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Fall of Mazar heralds Taliban collapse in north
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| 12 November 2001 |
By Anthony Davis JDW Correspondent
Jabal Saraj
The surprise fall of the Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif and the dramatic domino-like collapse of other Taliban-held towns in the north, including Taloqan, has fundamentally altered the balance of power in the country and may mark the beginning of the end of Taliban military power.
As opposition United Front (UF) forces prepare for a long-awaited assault on Kabul, up to 15,000 Taliban and allied forces are now trapped in a pocket in the northern provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan. With all air and land links to Kabul and the south now cut, their surrender or defeat appears, in the words of one senior UF spokesman, to be “just a matter of time”.
“The importance of the dramatic defeat for the Taliban was not only that they’ve lost huge areas but also their main fighting force,” said UF foreign minister Dr Abdullah on 11 November.
The collapse of the ethnic Pushtun Taliban in the minority-dominated north began on 9 November with the UF seizure of Mazar-e Sharif, the lynchpin of the Taliban hold on the north. After opposition breakthroughs at Dehdadi to the west of the city and the Marmoul Gorge, close to the airport 10km east of Mazar, the Taliban command ordered a general retreat from the city between 1800h and 1900h local time. The retreat order also involved abandoning the nearby riverport of Heiratan on the Uzbekistan border, 65km to the northeast.
To the relief of UF commanders, no attempt was made by the Taliban to blow the vital bridge at Heiratan across the Amu Darya River linking Afghanistan to Uzbekistan.
UF advance elements entered Mazar city between 1930h and 2030h encountering at first only light resistance according to sources that spoke to Jane’s Defence Weekly from the front.
The fiercest resistance in the city came on 10 November when UF forces surrounded a large force of mainly Pakistani, Arab and other foreign fighters in the Sultan Razzia Girls High School in the Darwaza-e-Balkh quarter of western Mazar. In the assault that followed, reportedly after calls to surrender had been ignored, at least several hundred foreign fighters were killed, according to UF sources. Opposition commander of Shi’a forces in Mazar Gen Mohammad Mohaqeq asserted in a Farsi-language radio interview that 1,200 enemy fighters had been in the school and almost all had been killed.
According to senior UF sources some 5,000 Taliban and allied forces are believed to have abandoned Mazar and Heiratan, leaving behind them all their armour and heavy weapons. Some fled across open desert to the east towards Kunduz province, a Taliban stronghold in the north with a significant Pushtun population. Most Taliban, reportedly harried by night-time US airstrikes, moved southeast along the highway to Samangan towards Pul-e-Khumri in Baaghlan province. From there some units continued south towards Bamian and Kabul while others turned north towards Kunduz. The city’s fall opened the way for a domino collapse of provinces across the north.
The UF moved rapidly to exploit the fall of Mazar by opening a second front in the northeast just over 24h later at 2200h on 10 November. Its main target was Taloqan. After a counter-offensive spearheaded mainly by foreign troops the offensive was resumed and aided by fighting that reportedly broke out in Taloqan town between Taliban main forces and local allies who switched their allegiance to the UF. The town was secured on the afternoon of 11 November.
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