N. Alliance Fighters Head to Mosques
By STEVEN GUTKIN
Associated Press Writer
QUM QUSHLAQ, Afghanistan - The crackle of gunfire echoed across a parched moonscape where nothing stands but a sole mud hut and a handful of armed fighters of the northern-based alliance fighting Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.
The fighters' leader, Mohammed Dana-Buay, left his men for a few hours to head to a mosque for Friday prayers _ and to ask God for help.
"I prayed for victory for the northern alliance. And I prayed for peace," Dana-Buay said moments before his group fired an ear-shattering round of artillery at Taliban front-line positions three miles across a dusty valley.
Northern alliance fighters said Friday that they are still waiting for orders to advance their positions and take advantage of the current U.S. assault on the Taliban. They claimed on Thursday to have captured the key central province of Gur, which borders four provinces the opposition considers crucial to unseating the Taliban.
The claim could not be independently verified, but Naim Nuri, a northern alliance commander, said Friday the victory was significant "because we cut off their supply lines."
The northern alliance suffered a devastating loss last month when suicide bombers killed Ahmad Shah Massood, the alliance's charismatic military leader. But its spirits have been buoyed by the hope that the U.S. assault will enable them to oust the Taliban.
"Be strong and fight the terrorists," said a Muslim prayer leader, or mullah, in the opposition-controlled town of Dasht-e-Qala, a few miles from the front line where Taliban and northern alliance fighters face off.
"Pray for victory," said the mullah as fighters toting Kalashnikov rifles streamed into the mosque, taking a short break from the war to honor the Muslim holy day. As the men prayed, mortar and artillery fire cracked in the background _ a sound disregarded by ragged children in the unpaved streets who've grown up knowing nothing but war.
The alliance's leaders have not yet spelled out a comprehensive plan to wrest power from the Taliban amid the American offensive. But the fighters and commanders on the ground are eager to move.
Standing at the top of a hill a few miles from the front line, Nuri told The Associated Press that when the order comes, the northern alliance will stage a multi-pronged attack on the Taliban that will be swift and fierce.
The forces of Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek warlord who has shifted sides several times in Afghanistan's various civil wars, will storm the strategic northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, Nuri said.
Simultaneously, alliance fighters will advance in the northern province of Takhar , where Nuri spoke, and then other provinces, said Nuri.
"We will finish them off," he said.
Nuri, who is in charge of artillery units for the northern alliance, said he, too, prayed Friday for peace.
"I've been fighting for 24 years. We beat back the Russians with sticks and axes, and we can do the same thing to the Taliban," he said while pointing to Taliban positions across a valley.
The former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, ushering in more than two decades of civil war that have devastated the Central Asian nation of 21 million people.
Few believe the northern alliance could serve as a viable post-Taliban government because it represents mostly minority interests and because its leaders wreaked great havoc on the country when they were in power five years ago.
The Taliban _ now under U.S. attack because they harbor Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaida terrorist network blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in America _ currently control about 90 percent of Afghanistan, and the northern alliance the rest.
Nuri and other alliance officials insist the Taliban have been weakened by six days of intense pounding by the U.S. military _ and are putting up less resistance to northern alliance fire.
"They (the Taliban) can't attack because they're losing power," Nuri said.
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