Plays for Power in Afghanistan?

Nov. 17, 2001 -- 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.

The U.S. had no evidence bin Laden had left, a Pentagon official told ABCNEWS, adding that the Taliban could be purposely trying to misdirect the hunt for bin Laden in order to protect him. The official said bin Laden could conceivably slip out of Afghanistan undetected, but that the U.S. eventually would likely track him down wherever he is.

Rumors of bin Laden's departure weren't the only sign of strains upon bin Laden and his organization, al Qaeda. In a claim that squared with earlier U.S. intelligence reports, a Taliban official said Mohammed Atef, a close confidante of Osama bin Laden and a senior member of al Qaeda, have been killed in an airstrike.

Mullah Najibullah, a Taliban official in the southern Afghan town of Spinboldak, told The Associated Press that Atef had died at an undisclosed location along with seven other al Qaeda members Najibullah would not identify — other than to say they did not include bin Laden.

Atef was indicted with bin Laden and others in the bombings of two U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998 and was believed to have been involved in the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

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Report: Taliban Leader Flees

The Taliban dismissed a report Friday by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press that the Taliban's supreme spiritual leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, had agreed to leave the southern city of Kandahar and head for the mountains along with members of his inner circle.

"The Taliban are in complete control of Kandahar, andreports of the Taliban's withdrawal are baseless," spokesmanMaulvi Najibullah told Reuters. "Life is normal inKandahar."

U.S. officials had been skeptical of the report that Omar or the Taliban were going to leave Kandahar — the Afghan city that spawned the Taliban and served as its spiritual stronghold through its five years in power.

Fighting, Bombing in Kunduz

In the northern city of Kunduz, an estimated 10,000 Taliban fighters, a number of them foreign mercenaries from Pakistan and Chechnya, are surrounded by Northern Alliance forces. And U.S. jets today bombed the Taliban fighters' position in Kunduz, The Associated Press reported.

According to ABCNEWS' Don Dahler in Taloqan, near Kunduz, a Northern Alliance commander Friday gave the Taliban fighters 48 hours to surrender. But most reporters believe the mercenaries would fight to the last man because of reports of the Northern Alliance's grisly treatment of foreign mercenaries.

Perhaps to secure their positions internally, the Taliban resisters have killed many of the local commanders, fearing they would switch sides to the Northern Alliance, ABCNEWS correspondent Sebastian Junger reported.

U.S. Troops Active

Elsewhere, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said U.S. special forces were in southern Afghanistan and directly engaging al Qaeda members and Taliban troops in their search for bin Laden and Omar.

"They are killing Taliban that won't surrender and al Qaeda that are trying to move from one place to another," Rumsfeld told reporters.

The United States now has at least 300 special operation troops on the ground in Afghanistan and U.S. forces are shifting to a strategy of staging fewer bombing runs while making a stronger effort on the ground to find bin Laden.

A pilot on board the USS Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea said it's harder to pinpoint a target now that the Northern Alliance has taken so much territory from the Taliban.

"The Northern Alliance is making a lot of moves as they go across the country," he said. "It's very difficult for us to try and figure out who is who on the ground."

"With so much vehicle movement around and troops moving around, it's hard to keep the big picture of who is who, where they're at and what their locations are," he added. "So it makes [it], probably more so than ever, very important for us to be restrained when it comes to which targets we're going to go for."

Rear Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, on board the USS Roosevelt, said American warplanes were doing other things.

"We're doing more reconnaissance and patrolling than we are bombing," Fitzgerald said. "We've started flying fewer sorties. However we're still maintaining a presence up there around the clock."

In other developments:

The U.S. command confirmed late Friday a laser-guided bomb malfunctioned and struck a mosque in Khost, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Officials said two other bombs struck Taliban targets. It said it did not know of any casualties.

United Nations staff are returning to Kabul for the first time in more than two months. They left shortly after Sept. 11 in expectation of U.S. air strikes, though efforts to move in humanitarian aid continued. "Following an absence of 65 days, the United Nations international staff returned to Kabul today," Eric Falt, director of the U.N. Information Center, said Saturday. "In saying so, I would like to also recall that U.N. activities never stopped, thanks to the great dedication and courage of our national Afghan staff."

ABCNEWS' John McWethy, Jim Sciutto, Sebastian Junger and Adaora Udoji contributed to this report.

ABCNEWS' John McWethy, Jim Sciutto, Sebastian Junger and Adaora Udoji contributed to this report.