US hopes to tap surrendering Taliban troops

By Bryan Bender, The Boston Globe Correspondent and Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff, 2/13/2002

KABUL, Afghanistan - Following the surrender last week of the Taliban's former foreign minister, more than 15 top Taliban officials have begun negotiating with representatives of the new Afghan government to give themselves up, Afghan and US officials said yesterday.

Their surrender, which the officials said could take weeks to negotiate, could provide US forces in Afghanistan with access to upper echelons of the ousted regime that harbored Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network.

''Right now we are in contact with more than 15 top Taliban,'' Khalid Pashtoon, a senior aide to Kandahar Governor Gul Agha Sherzai, told reporters. ''We are trying to convince them to surrender peacefully, with dignity, and we promise them they will not be mistreated.''

Pashtoon did not name those involved but said that some may be former Cabinet ministers and that fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was not among them. He also did not say whether they are negotiating as a group or individually, or how and where the negotiations are being held.

US Central Command in Tampa, which is overseeing the US-led operation in Afghanistan, confirmed that negotiations between Taliban leaders and Afghan authorities are underway, and said US officials are not participating directly in the discussions.

''That's something that is going on between parties in Afghanistan, and we're not involved in that at this time,'' said Navy Commander Dan Keesee, a Central Command spokesman.

Meanwhile, new reports surfaced yesterday of civilian casualties caused by US bombing in Afghanistan. Residents near Tirin Kor, in southern Afghanistan, said a US attack Oct. 21 on a Taliban military base and a police station also killed 21 people from two families - mostly women and children - who were fleeing, The New York Times reported today.

But Lieutenant Colonel Jim Yonts, another Central Command spokesman, told the Times that imagery taken from the Oct. 21 strike revealed no civilian casualties.

While speculation about surrender negotiations in Afghanistan has been raised in the past with no apparent progress, US officials hope these discussions will lead to a breakthrough. They are anxious to question former Taliban leaders about Omar's whereabouts and gather information that might help US forces find bin Laden and other members of Al Qaeda still at large in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

Afghanistan's interior minister, Younous Qanooni, was quoted in yesterday's London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that he believes Omar is being protected by his tribe in southern Helmand province. US officials say they do not know where he or bin Laden are.

Afghan officials said the authorities in contact with senior Taliban officials also played a key role in the surrender of the former Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Muttawakil, who was turned over by Afghan authorities to US forces at the Kandahar airport Friday. A senior aide to Omar until last fall, Muttawakil is the highest-ranking Taliban official in US custody. At least two other senior Taliban officials are in US custody: former army chief of staff Fazel Mazloom, who is believed to be held at the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and former ambassador to Pakistan Adbul Salam Zaeef.

US and Afghan officials said that Mattawakil's treatment could help persuade other top Taliban to give themselves up. The former foreign minister has been moved from the Kandahar airport to a more comfortable location, officials said yesterday, and is now being held at an undisclosed location in Kandahar.

To nudge the negotiations forward, Pashtoon said, US officials have given assurances that the Taliban leaders would not be shipped to Cuba and would be handed back to Afghan authorities after interrogation.

The Taliban leaders considering surrender ''are trying to understand what's going to happen to them if they turn themselves in or if they decide to give us assistance in finding other people,'' Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon.

US officials speculated that President Bush's decision last week to grant Taliban detainees protections under the Geneva Conventions may have allayed some of the fears of Taliban fugitives about their fate in American hands.

At the Pentagon, defense officials reiterated claims by four Afghan prisoners detained for nearly two weeks that they were physically abused by US special forces is unfounded. The prisoners were among 27 captured in a deadly Jan. 23 raid north of Kandahar but later handed over to Afghan authorities after it was determined they were neither Taliban nor Al Qaeda.

''All 27 detainees were medically screened upon arrival in Kandahar, and there were no issues of beatings or kickings or anything of that sort,'' Air Force General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in a briefing. He indicated, however, that they may have been roughed up while being subdued during their capture.

In Kabul, meanwhile, a high-ranking Afghan intelligence official declared that Al Qaeda is no longer a serious threat to peace in the country.

''There is no hope for them,'' General Zaher Akhbar, head of Afghanistan's military intelligence service, said in an interview with the Globe. ''The biggest nests of these Al Qaeda members are destroyed.''

A visiting European dignitary was not so optimistic.

''We all know the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban is not yet won, not by a long way,'' Germany's defense minister, Rudolf Scharping, said yesterday at the end of his daylong trip to Kabul. He visited Germany's peacekeeping troops and talked with interim leader Hamid Karzai about the future of the 18-nation security force patrolling Kabul.

Karzai's government, meanwhile, has set up a possible showdown in Paktia province by appointing a new governor, Taj Mohammad Wardak, seen as a supporter of the former king, Mohammed Zahir Shah. The change was made two weeks after the provincial capital, Gardez, exploded in fierce fighting between rival groups.

Bender reported from Washington; Bombardieri from Kabul. Material from wire services was included in this report.