Western warlord halts advance towards Kandahar

 
HERAT, Afghanistan, Nov 17 (Reuters) - The forces of anti-Taliban warlord Ismail Khan have advanced toward Kandahar and halted at the junction of three provinces after taking a town at the entrance to the heart of Taliban territory, a spokesman said on Saturday.

Fighters of Ismail Khan had reached the town of Daralam on the borders of Farah, Nimroz and Helmand provinces and occupied it, Khan's spokesman Mohamadullah Afsaritold Reuters.

"There is no frontline but the situation is very uncertain," Afsari said. "We do not intend to push on yet," he said.

Khan had vowed on Friday to march on the Taliban's stronghold of Kandahar -- and occupy it if necessary -- despite opposition from local tribes to an outside force taking the city.

Khan, a veteran mujahideen commander, this week retook his old powerbase, the western city of Herat that commands a major road through the Desert of Death to Kandahar. Khan is an old enemy of the Taliban -- they drove him out of Herat in 1995 and jailed him in 1997, but he escaped last year.

Although Khan is a respected figure, he is a Persian-speaker, a fact which inspires distrust among the ethnic Pashtuns who dominate the south and make up most of the Taliban.

His spokesman said one reason Khan's fighters had stopped at the border of Helmand province -- from which many members of the Taliban sprang -- was because Khan wanted to see a Pashtun takeover of Kandahar, the stronghold of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.