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Former Afghan Leader Returns to Kabul
By William Branigin and Keith B. Richburg
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 17 – The political leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, who was Afghanistan's president until the Taliban ousted him five years ago, returned to the capital today, and the Bush administration said it would press the alliance not to simply assume power now that it controls most of the country. The return of Burhanuddin Rabbani just days after the Northern Alliance recaptured Kabul contradicted statements by alliance officials this week that he would stay out of the capital to avoid appearances that his government was reclaiming power. The United States and its partners in the international coalition against terrorism had urged the alliance to keep its forces out of Kabul so that a broad-based transitional government could be formed to replace the Taliban. Rabbani gave assurances today that the Northern Alliance would "welcome the formation of a broad-based government as soon as possible" and would accept the decision of a proposed national council that would craft a new political system for Afghanistan. At the same time, however, other alliance officials said large numbers of foreign troops should not be brought into the country unless the alliance is first consulted, focusing further attention on the degree of control the anti-Taliban coalition has already assumed. The return of the Northern Alliance's leader came as the Taliban denied reports that its own leader had relinquished control of Kandahar, the movement's southern stronghold, to two tribal chiefs. In the north, U.S. warplanes continued to attack Taliban forces surrounded by the Northern Alliance in the town of Kunduz. At a news conference shortly after his arrival here by motorcade from the Panjshir Valley 40 miles to the north, Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, sought to allay concerns that his government was installing itself permanently, to the exclusion of other parties and at the expense of ethnic Pashtuns. Ethnic Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group and the main support base for the Taliban, traditionally have held the balance of power in Afghan governments. "We have not come to Kabul to extend our government," Rabbani, 61, a professor of Islamic law, said at the Foreign Ministry building, flanked by other alliance leaders. "This victory does not belong to one ethnic group, but to all the nation of Afghanistan," he said of the Taliban's retreat from Kabul and most of northern Afghanistan. "This is a victory for Islam, a victory for the civilized world, a victory for right over evil and for light over darkness." Rabbani said the Northern Alliance would respect the decision of a proposed loya jirga, a traditional grand tribal council, on the country's new leadership. But he gave no indication of when such an assembly could be held, and he appeared cool to the idea of bringing back the country's 87-year-old former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, to head the government. The United States and its allies have encouraged the formation of a multi-ethnic government instead of the restoration of Rabbani and the Northern Alliance, in the hope that the kind of infighting that wrecked Rabbani's 1992-96 administration can be avoided. The power struggles and factional warfare that marred his rule left parts of the capital in ruins and more than 30,000 civilians dead – turmoil that enabled the Taliban to seize Kabul and drive Rabbani and his colleagues into armed opposition groups like the Northern Alliance. President Bush, in a regular meeting of the National Security Council today at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., talked with aides about efforts to pressure the alliance not to create its own government. An administration official said pressure on the alliance to restrain itself would continue. "We have, are and will continue to deliver that message," the official said. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed their top diplomats to press "very, very hard" to get the United Nations to accelerate efforts to form a government and said they would continue "the message to the Northern Alliance about a broad-based government." Two planeloads of U.N. officials, led by Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy special representative for Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell, arrived in Afghanistan today to push for a conference on a new post-Taliban government and to reestablish a U.N. presence in Kabul after a two-month absence. The U.N. team landed at Bagram air base, 35 miles north of Kabul, where about 100 British troops have been helping since Thursday to restore basic facilities. The arrival at Bagram of the British, along with about 60 U.S. Special Forces in civilian clothes, appeared to raise concerns among some Northern Alliance officials about the presence of foreign troops on Afghan soil. The alliance's foreign minister, Abdullah, said discussions with British officials had covered "the presence of less than 100 British soldiers in Bagram." While the alliance is committed to cooperation with the U.S.-led international coalition, he said, "if we're talking about thousands of fighting forces from outside Afghanistan, this is a major issue that has to be discussed." Abdullah said the alliance was willing to consult with the United Nations about plans to send multinational peacekeepers to Afghanistan, but he and other officials made it clear that they would prefer to let their own forces continue handling the job, especially because Kabul has been calm since the alliance takeover. "We do not rule out any such possibilities," he said. "We are open to the idea [of foreign peacekeepers], but it's an idea that should be based on realities on the ground." The British have put about 5,000 troops on alert for immediate dispatch to Afghanistan, with deployment possible as early as Sunday. Officials in London reacted sharply today to the suggestion that their troops were unwanted. "We were in contact with the Northern Alliance before we went in," a Defense Ministry spokesman said. British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon said he expected that "the Northern Alliance will recognize the benefit of having experts on the ground." Hoon told the BBC that the marines already dispatched to Bagram are technical experts and engineers "who can tell them and us what needs to be done in order to make the air strip at Bagram usable for the kinds of humanitarian and diplomatic missions that clearly are going to be necessary." U.S. officials cautioned that the fall of Kabul did not spell the end of the U.S.-led military efforts in Afghanistan. Rice was to appear on television news programs Sunday to stress the larger aim of destroying Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network inside and outside Afghanistan. The Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said today that bin Laden, who has been under the Taliban's protection in Afghanistan for five years, had left the area of Afghanistan still under Taliban control. Taliban officials did not know where the accused terrorist was, Zaeef said – echoing a claim that the Taliban has made during several past crises, conceding later that bin Laden's location was not a mystery. The Taliban today appeared to still have control of two strongholds: Kandahar, its birthplace in southern Afghanistan, and Kunduz, where thousands of Taliban troops have regrouped after a string of defeats in the north. The Taliban forces at Kunduz are hemmed in by the Northern Alliance. But alliance commanders have said they prefer not to attack until U.S. airstrikes had further weakened the town's defenders, and they expressed hope that many of the trapped Taliban forces would simply surrender. At Kandahar, Taliban officials denied a news report the the movement's leader, Mohammad Omar, had agreed to pull his forces out of the city and hand over control to two Pashtun leaders. "We have thousands of troops in Kandahar and in the provinces around it, and we have decided to fight to retain control of them to maintain Islamic rule," Mohammed Tayeb al-Agha, a spokesman for Omar, told al-Jazeera, a television network based in Qatar. Staff writer Dana Milbank in Crawford and correspondent T.R. Reid in London contributed to this report. |
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America at War
