Taliban claim foiling uprising plot


By Aimal Khan
Frontier Post
1-9-99

PESHAWAR - The Taliban student militia has claimed to have foiled an opposition plot to create disturbances in northern Afghanistan simultaneous and arrested 30 alleged culprits besides recovering a huge quantity of sophisticated arms. Afghan sources said here Friday that some of the arrested people were shifted to Kandahar, the Taliban headquarters located in southwestern Afghanistan, for further interrogation and more arrests were expected in this regard. Pro-Taliban Pakistani sources claimed that the student militia had recently unearthed a plot, reportedly hatched by Tajik warlord Ahmad Shah Masoud at the behest of his foreign supporters to create disturbances in the north.

The Masoud-led opposition had planned to stage simultaneous mass armed uprisings against the hardline militia in the northern provinces of Balkh, Sheberghan, Faryab, Jauzjan and Sur-i-Pul. For this purpose they had secretly started smuggling arms and ammunition and a huge amount of money to purchase the loyalties of local commanders and finance the uprisings there. The seized arms and money were smuggled from Panjsher, Masoud's stronghold in Kapisa province, and were meant for further distribution among the remaining forces of Shiite Hizb-i-Wahdat, Uzbek warlord Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum and Gen. Abdul Malik, who were in hiding in the far-flung mountainous areas of Faryab, Sheberghan and Sur-i-Pul provinces. the sources said soon after receiving the information, the Taliban authorities conducted several raids in Balkh, Faryab and Sor-i-Pul and recovered huge quantity of arms and ammunitions from the opposition hide-outs.

The arms and ammunitions seized from these areas by the Taliban included 10,265 rocket launchers, Klashnikoves, heavy and light ammunition, shells , mines etc. In Faryab alone, they captured about 5 billion afghani along with arms.