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Defiant Taliban hit back as clerics stand by bin Laden
KABUL, Sept 18 (AFP) - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban
Tuesday told their people to be ready for a holy war
as Islamic scholars gathering to decide Osama bin
Laden's fate made it clear they would not hand over
the man wanted "dead or alive" by the United States.
The Islamic regime's army also unleashed a fierce
offensive against their last opponents within the
country in a bid to pre-empt US moves to strengthen
them.
The display of defiance from the Taliban came as their
supporters in Pakistan mounted the biggest
anti-American demonstration yet, heightening fears
that any US attack on Afghanistan will have
devastating implications for the stability of its
neighbour.
"Of course if there is an invasion of an Islamic
country, there will be jihad against the invaders," a
senior Taliban official told AFP as hundreds of
Islamic clerics, or ulema, streamed into Kabul.
"After the invasion jihad will be the only alternative
and that is the obligation of Muslims."
The ulema are expected Wednesday to begin a meeting
which will consider whether to extradite bin Laden,
who is suspected of orchestrating last week's terror
attacks on New York and Washington and has been
indicted in New York for the 1998 bombing of two US
embassies in Africa.
The Taliban have previously hinted they might give bin
Laden up for trial in a neutral, preferrably Muslim,
country.
But the clerics arriving on Tuesday were in no mood
for compromise.
"Even if the whole of Afghanistan is devastated we
won't hand him over until there is a solid proof
against him," Mullah Mohammad Hassan, a representative
of Paktika province told AFP.
Another scholar, Mawlawi Abdul Zahir from the Bagram
district of Kabul, added: "We are ready for to defend
ourselves if the Americans attack us.
"We have already defeated and taught a lesson to their
British grandfathers and their Russian brothers," he
said.
In their biggest offensive in months, Taliban forces
launched an attack in the northeastern province of
Takhar in a bid to cut their opponents' key supply
lines from neighbouring Tajikistan.
Fierce fighting was still raging Tuesday, an
opposition spokesman told AFP.
The onslaught represents an attempt by the Taliban
army to exploit last week's death of the opposition's
charismatic commander Ahmad Shah Masood and cut their
supply lines before the mountainous region's harsh
winter sets in.
If they succeed, the opposition forces could be
eliminated before they have time to reap the benefit
of an anticipated surge in support from the United
States in the wake of last week's terror attacks.
Ordinary Afghans were fleeing the main cities in fear
of a US strike, with thousands massing near the
Pakistani border. Those who stayed behind were
becoming increasingly anxious over possible civil
unrest or conflict between rival factions of the
ruling Islamic militia.
In neighbouring Pakistan, a crucial US partner for any
attack on Afghanistan, hundreds of police and
paramilitaries had to be deployed in the teeming port
of Karachi to prevent more than 5,000 radical Islamic
students marching on the US consulate.
It was the largest anti-US demonstration in the
current crisis and also the biggest since military
ruler Pervez Musharraf seized power two years ago.
Troops remained on alert but there was no movement out
of barracks pending the outcome of the talks in Kabul,
which Pakistan is desperately hoping will produce some
sort of compromise.
Pakistani radicals have vowed to join any Afghan jihad
and warned the government that helping the US in any
attack will mean civil war.
Pakistan President Musharraf has promised his
"unstinting cooperation" with any US action. But
political leaders have warned him that this must stop
short of letting Pakistan be used as the launching pad
for an attack.
"If the government agrees to let American ground
troops into Pakistan there will be a hell of a
reaction," a former senior army officer, retired
Lieutenant-General K.M. Azhar, told AFP.
The meeting of the ulema in Kabul had been due to
start Tuesday but was delayed because many scholars
had not been able to get to the city in time.
The unexpected decision to seek a ruling from the
scholars was announced by Taliban leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar after a high-level Pakistani delegation
visited him Monday in the southeastern city of
Kandahar, where bin Laden is also based.
The ulema includes many non-Taliban scholars who could
be prepared to countenance some sort of deal --
although any decision, or fatwa, will have to be
approved by Omar, who is married to bin Laden's eldest
daughter.
A team led by the head of Pakistan's intelligence
services, the Taliban's main backers, gave Omar a
blunt warning Monday that the country could be bombed
back to the stone age if bin Laden is not handed over.
US President George W. Bush has warned that Americans
will not rest until they secure justice.
"There's an old poster out west that says, as I
recall, 'Wanted dead or alive'," he said during a
visit to the Pentagon, a target in last week's suicide
attacks along with the World Trade Center in New York.
The Taliban consider bin Laden an honored "guest" and
have repeatedly rejected his extradition in the past,
despite UN sanctions following the twin US embassy
bombings in East Africa in 1998 which he is accused of
masterminding.
The last Afghan jihad was issued against the Soviet
Union after its 1979 invasion of the country and
resulted, a decade later, in the Red Army beating a
humiliating retreat.
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