Plays for Power in Afghanistan?
Nov. 17 -- Uncertainty reigned in parts of Afghanistan today, as observers wondered who was running the southern city of Kandahar, when Taliban forces in the northern city of Kunduz might fall, and whether suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden had left the country.
Some also were suspicious of the return to Kabul today of Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former president of Afghanistan deposed by the Taliban in 1996. Some saw Rabbani's presence as a symbol of Northern Alliance control over Kabul, though the United States, Pakistan and their allies have called for a more broad-based government that would include more of Afghanistan's ethnic groups.
But Rabbani's foreign minister told reporters Rabbani remains committed to a multi-ethnic government that would include Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, who were a key component of the Taliban's power base. Rabbani seemed to second the idea.
"This victory is not a victory of just one part of the country it is avictory for all Afghan people from North and South," Rabbani told reporters, according to a translation by the Associated Press. "We did not come to Kabul to extend our government. We came to Kabul for peace and to call on all Afghan groups, outside and inside the work for peace."
Rabbani, who never relinquished his United Nations-recognized claim to the Afghan presidency, invited leaders of other factions, excluding the Taliban, to negotiate a new government in Kabul, the Associated Press reported. However, the U.S. and others have said such negotiations should take place in a neutral location.
Where’s Osama?; Atef Dead
The question of location also surrounded the hunt for Osama bin Laden, the suspected terrorist mastermind the Taliban had refused to turn over despite an ultimatum by the United States to do so or face reprisals. Those reprisals came in the form of military strikes that now have the Taliban on the run.
A Taliban official reportedly made conflicting statements today about whether bin Laden had left Afghanistan with his family. At first, the Arab television news channel al Jazeera and the Associated Press quoted Abdul Salam Zaeff, the Taliban envoy to Pakistan, as saying bin Laden had left Afghanistan. Later, al Jazeera reportedly said it had mistranslated Zaeff's comment, and Zaeff denied making the remark to the Associated Press.
