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Afghan Opposition Consolidates Hold on Kabul and Kandahar
KABUL, Nov. 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Northern Alliance leaders Wednesday took over various government ministry buildings in Kabul, seizing the reins of government despite Western calls for broad consultation on a post-Taliban regime.
Northern Alliance officials took charge at the foreign ministry, where Abdullah Abdullah, the opposition's foreign minister, was expected shortly to set up operations, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
At the interior ministry, the Northern Alliance's interior minister, Younis Qanooni, held meetings in the office. Five years ago, the Taliban ousted the government in which he held the same post.
"We are backing an interim government in Kabul, after the collapse of the Taliban," Qanooni said. "We want this interim government to be a broad-based government that all ethnic parties in Afghanistan are involved in. And after two years, the general elections will be held in our country."
Since the alliance arrived in the capital Tuesday, Kabul has been under the control of a military and security committee headed by Qanooni and Mohammad Qassim Fahim, defense minister in the Northern Alliance government.
The United States has appealed for the alliance not to do anything hasty, but the opposition already ignored Washington's calls to stay out of Kabul.
Asked whether his occupation of the ministry meant he had already become the de facto interior minister, Qanooni replied: "No, I just found this place suitable for myself because there is furniture and carpets and everything here."
Afghanistan's Northern Alliance forces also captured Wednesday the Taliban's southern stronghold of Kandahar, a senior Afghan envoy in neighboring Tajikistan told AFP.
The Northern Alliance is a loose coalition of mujahideen forces drawn mainly from the Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara minorities.
The Afghan opposition Wednesday also took Gardez, a key provincial capital in southern Afghanistan from Taliban, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said.
The Pakistan-based agency said tribal leaders and opposition commanders had taken the Paktia's provincial headquarters, 122 kilometers (76 miles) south of Kabul.
According to the report, which gave no source, a new shura (council) took charge of the city after the Taliban fled.
The U.S. special envoy to the Afghan opposition, James Dobbins, is due in Pakistan late Wednesday. He met earlier in Rome with former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah for urgent talks.
Pakistan has called for a U.N. peacekeeping force to take over Kabul. The U.N. has rejected such a move, but admits that some kind of international force may be necessary in Afghanistan.
Northern Alliance pressure on the international community was expected to increase Thursday with the return to Kabul of deposed president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
Rabbani, currently in the Panjshir Valley, is expected to declare himself head of territories now under the control of the anti-Taliban opposition, a senior Afghan envoy in the Tajik capital Dushanbe told AFP.
Deposed by the Taliban in 1996, Rabbani is still recognized as Afghanistan's president by the United Nations and most countries.
Rabbani said Tuesday that the former king, a member of the dominant Pashtun community, was welcome to return from Rome to Afghanistan, but only as a private citizen.
The 87-year-old Zahir Shah said in a formal message to be broadcast Wednesday that he would return home "very shortly", not as a monarch, but to serve his country.
U.S. forces have helped the Alliance and other opposition factions take on the Taliban, but their main aim remains to hunt down Osama bin Laden. Washington blames the Saudi dissident for the deadly September 11 attacks on New York and Washington that left some 5,000 dead.
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