-Caveat Lector- http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/12/18/walq118
.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/12/18/ixhome.html WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Mullah Omar 'holed up with 500 men in cave hide-out' By Barbie Dutter in Kandahar (Filed: 18/12/2001) THE Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, is thought to holed up with hundreds of heavily armed men at a mountain hide-out in southern Afghanistan, the interim intelligence chief in Kandahar disclosed last night. In the first detailed report of Mullah Omar's possible whereabouts, Haji Gullalai, a senior anti-Taliban commander, said witnesses' accounts placed the fugitive leader and up to 500 fighters in an area of hills and caves near Baghran village, 100 miles north west of Kandahar. He said they had taken all their weapons, ammunition, vehicles and even office equipment as they fled Kandahar 12 days ago, when the city surrendered. Mr Gullalai claimed that local tribal fighters were preparing to hunt down Mullah Omar with support from the air by American forces, who had been given regular updates on the Taliban leader's suspected escape route. "We are completely ready to face the situation if it is confirmed. We have enough forces to fight against them," he said. "Even with 400 or 500 guys he is alone because the Afghan nation is with us." But he said the assault would not begin for "two or three days" as the security of Kandahar and the welfare of its citizens were a top priority for the security forces. There were no fears that Mullah Omar would escape from Baghran as "he has no other place to hide. If he tries to go further the Northern Alliance are also trying to find him and kill him." Mr Gullalai also said Hafiz Majid, a former right-hand man to Mullah Omar, is negotiating his surrender. Majid sent family members to Kandahar to hand over weapons and vehicles, but is seeking guarantees that he will not be executed or handed over to US forces before leaving the village of Sperwan, 20 miles from Kandahar, where he has been holding out with an unknown number of men. Meanwhile, the faithful were gathered yesterday at the Taliban cemetery in Kandahar, chanting verses from the Koran at the graves of commanders and warriors who have fallen in the name of Islam over the years. As the Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Fitr entered its second day, Taliban diehards went to the 2,000-grave burial ground to pay homage to the dead and offer prayers for their fundamentalist rulers' return. "We pray that God gives Mullah Omar 200 more years of life," said Janan, a 31-year-old goat seller whose home in Durai, a village on Kandahar's hilly hinterland, was damaged in a bombing raid last month. "We miss him and are very sad he has gone," he said of the regime's supreme leader. "We pray five times a day and in every prayer we ask for his long life and his health and for him to come back." The men brimmed with confidence that their fighters would one day regroup and reclaim Kandahar, the regime's spiritual cradle and last sanctuary before its surrender. It was in the city and its surrounding districts that Mullah Omar emerged as a Robin Hood figure in the early 1990s, protecting the poor and the abused from the region's rapacious warlords. He asked for no reward, save for his supporters to follow him in setting up a just Islamic system. In 1996, he was named Leader of the Faithful after taking out the reputed cloak of the Prophet Mohammed and showing it to a large crowd of Taliban supporters in Kandahar, a gesture aimed at legitimising his role as a man chosen by God to lead the Afghan people. The Taliban's political power base has now dissolved and Kandahar is in the tenuous care of the same rival tribal factions from whom Mullah Omar seized the city seven years ago. But support for the regime remains strong in the dilapidated city. "The Taliban brought Islamic laws to our country and they solved everyone's problems. There was peace in the city. Now we have no law, no justice, only guns on the streets," said Raz Mohammad, a 21-year-old shopkeeper. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! 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