U.S. warplanes target retreating Taliban

Associated Press WriterKABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- The northern alliance moved Wednesday to consolidate its grip on Kabul, taking over key posts and ministries despite a pledge to support a broad-based government. Forced to retreat south, the Taliban were reportedly struggling to prevent their movement from disintegrating.

In parts of the south and east, local tribal leaders unconnected to the alliance took control from the Taliban. Community elders in the city of Jalalabad -- between Kabul and the Pakistan border -- negotiated a deal with the Taliban to abandon the city in return for safe passage with their weapons, sources in the city said Wednesday.

Pashtun leaders were reportedly in open revolt against the hardline Islamic militia around Kandahar, the heart of the Taliban movement, and elsewhere in the south. The Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, have made up the bulk of the Taliban.

U.S. special forces are watching key roads in southern Afghanistan, hunting for senior members of the Taliban leadership, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said. "They have been interdicting the main roads that connect the north to the south to see what's going on and to stop people that they think ought to be stopped," he said.

U.S. jets pounded targets south of Jalalabad early Wednesday, the sources said. The area is suspected to contain hideouts of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist network.

In the capital, Kabul, radio broadcasts resumed and television was promised soon. Northern alliance officials returned to government offices they abandoned in 1996 when the Taliban drove them from power.

Officials portrayed the takeover of key ministries, such as defense and interior, as temporary and said they support a U.N.-supervised political settlement in which all ethnic groups would be represented.

In the south and east of the country, the situation was chaotic as local tribal leaders appeared to challenge the Taliban in the ethnic Pashtun heartlands.

Afghan sources in Pakistan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the airport in Kandahar was held by about 200 fighters loyal to Arif Khan, a member of a southern Pashtun tribe.

A Taliban official along the Pakistani border at Chaman, Mullah Najibullah, said Taliban fighters were firing on the airport Wednesday from hilltop positions.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported that tribal elders took control Wednesday of the town of Gardez, in Paktia province about 60 miles south of Kabul.

Yunus Khalis, a local powerbroker, took control of Jalalabad after a deal was struck with Taliban forces in the city for their withdrawal, the Afghan Islamic Press reported. Khalis declared himself independent of both the Taliban and the northern alliance.

Witnesses said Khalis' followers had also taken control of the Torkham border station to the west of the city and were preventing anyone -- including Afghans -- from entering the country.

An alliance offical in Kabul said there were reports of anti-Taliban uprisings in the southern provinces of Ghazni and Wardak. "People have revolted against the Taliban," said Saeed Hussain Anwari, a top Shiite Muslim commander.

The action among local ethnic leaders came as the Pentagon said U.S. special forces in the south were working on the next phase of the war. U.S military planners think the best course is to approach ethnic Pashtun tribal leaders in the south who are unhappy with the Taliban -- and persuade them to defect. The CIA has led the effort by trying to identify individuals or groups for the Pentagon to equip and arm, officials said.

There was no indication, however, that unrest in the south was a result of those efforts.

U.S. warplanes bombed the airport and military installations around Jalalabad at least six times overnight and early Wednesday, the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press reported. Jets also attacked a base in Khost, six miles from the Pakistani border, the agency said.

The Taliban abandoned Kabul and headed south before dawn Tuesday after the northern alliance, backed by intensive American bombing, fought their way to the edge of the city.

Taliban supporters say the withdrawal from urban areas throughout the country is a strategy that will allow the militia and its allies to wage a guerrilla war from Kandahar's rugged mountains and caves.

In the capital, relieved residents awoke Wednesday after a night free of the nearby crash of U.S. bombs. Triumphant northern alliance fighters patrolled the streets.

Mohammed Alam Ezdediar, who headed a northern alliance radio station before Kabul fell, assumed control of the newly renamed Radio Afghanistan and resumed airing music, which the Taliban had banned as frivolous.

He hired three women as news readers, and aired statements from the alliance defense ministry urging people to remain calm and return to work. Under the Taliban, women were banned from working outside the home except in the health sector.

Daoud Naimi, the new acting director of TV Afghanistan, said he hoped to resume television broadcasts soon. Television was also banned by the Taliban as un-Islamic.

Kabul residents cheerfully abandoned other Taliban edicts -- children flew kites, teen-agers listened to music and men shaved their beards. But most women retained their all-encompassing burqas.

The top U.N. envoy for Afghanistan outlined a plan for a two-year transitional government with a multinational security force. On Tuesday, northern alliance spokesman Abdullah said his movement supported the plan.

For the time being, however, the alliance, especially the Jamiat-e-Islami faction of former president Burhanuddin Rabbani, moved into key ministries in the capital.

Pakistani intelligence sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many Taliban leaders had sent their families across the border into Pakistan under the protection of Pashtun tribal leaders there.

The sources said the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, was trying to rally his remaining followers. Omar was either traveling with or was remaining in close communications with bin Laden, they added.

In a radio address, Omar said he was in Kandahar -- a report that could not be verified -- and urged his fighters to resist in the name of Islam. Those who do not are "just like a chicken with its head cut off," he said. "It falls in a ditch and dies."

President Bush ordered airstrikes on Afghanistan on Oct. 7 after the Taliban refused to hand over bin Laden for his suspected role in the September terrorist attacks that killed 4,500 people in the United States.

In Islamabad, Pakistan, the Taliban deputy ambassador Suhail Shaheen accused the northern alliance of atrocities against people in Kabul and other recently occupied cities and claimed human rights organizations were remaining silent "and watching the bloodshed of innocent people."

"The Afghans will never accept the murderous communist generals who are being imposed on the Afghans by foreign powers," he said.

In other attacks-related news:

-- Afhanistan's exiled monarch, Mohammed Zaher Shah, intends to return soon to his nation as a symbol of national unity and will appeal to his people to stop bloodshed and set up a democratic government, his aides said Wednesday. Zhaer Shah, who ruled for 40 years, has lived in Rome since he was ousted in 1973 in a palace coup.

-- The United Nations sent its first delivery of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, 55 tons of winter supplies via a barge across the Amu Darya River that separates Afghanistan from Uzbekistan. If the shipment is successful, as much as 17,600 tons of aid a month could be routed through northern Afghanistan.

-- In London, thousands of British troops were ordered Wednesday to prepare for possible duty in Kabul and other cities of Afghanistan captured from the Taliban regime.