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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Eighty Taliban prisoners in mass suicide
By Damien McElroy
(Filed: 02/12/2001)
EIGHTY Taliban prisoners of war have apparently blown themselves up rather
than surrender to the Northern Alliance.
The troops, captured after the fall of the northern city of Kunduz, had been
herded into a makeshift jail - a freight container - by soldiers loyal to the
Afghan warlord Gen Rashid Dostum, whose fighters were involved in last week's
slaughter of more than 600 prisoners of war in the uprising at the
Qali-i-Jhangi fortress.
Yesterday, 80 survivors of the massacre emerged from the basement of the
ruined fortress. They had hidden without food for days in the hope of
escaping the Northern Alliance.
Gen Dostum was in the process of bringing two Taliban leaders from Kunduz -
Mullah Faizal and Mullah Dadullah - to persuade the prisoners to accept their
defeat, when the men apparently took a decision to commit suicide en masse by
setting off at least one grenade.
"There was a loud rumble from inside one of the containers," said Abdullah
Ismail, one of Gen Dostum's commanders. "We opened it up to find that one or
more of the Taliban had triggered an explosion inside. It was a mess. There
were about 80 in there. There was stinking smoke and the walls were smeared
with flesh."
The incident in Sherberghan, near Mazar-i-Sharif, will raise new concerns
over the treatment of prisoners by the Northern Alliance. Gen Dostum's troops
are holding a further 6,000 former Taliban fighters.
The suicides, which took place on Friday afternoon, have stalled efforts to
get prisoners to hand over arms and ammunition. Northern Alliance guards have
been ordered to stop body searches of the captured troops, mainly Uzbeks and
Pakistanis. "We will not start to examine them until the Taliban mullahs
address them," said Commander Ismail.
Yesterday, Gen Dostum's lieutenants nervously patrolled the huge encampment
of prisoners. There are fears of a revolt that might lead to an even greater
slaughter than that at the Qali-i-Jhangi prison fortress.
The three-day uprising there, apparently sparked by the belief that prisoners
were to be executed, led to the death of a CIA officer and to US planes
bombing the prisoners.
Mindful of the fate of their colleague Johnny "Mike" Stunn, a CIA specialist
in paramilitary activities, Americans waiting to question the prisoners at
Sherberghan are keeping away, at least until the Northern Alliance confirm
that they have been searched.
Yesterday, at a guesthouse in the grounds of a grand villa a few miles away,
six American special operations personnel were waiting for word that they can
begin interrogations.
The six, who would not give their names but were happy to show photos of
their children back home, were given a tour of the compound on Thursday
evening by Gen Dostum, a man whose easy-going manner belies his reputation as
having the bloodiest hands in Afghanistan.
When Gen Dostum controlled Mazar in the mid-1990s, he disliked visiting the
city and instead spent his time at his walled-in villa in Sherberghan, with
its crystal chandeliers and swimming pool, receiving envoys such as Bill
Richardson, the former US ambassador to the United Nations.
A visitor last week said that the compound now resembled a vandalised version
of a Miami drug dealer's mansion. The Taliban had even chipped the heads of
animals in the mosaics that cover the walls in its grandest rooms.
During his heyday, a 2,000-strong militia was based at the nearby fort on the
outskirts of the dusty city to protect their leader and enforce his commands
across the region disparagingly nicknamed Dostumia, seized by the general
after he turned on former comrades in the pro-communist regime of President
Najibullah.
The Dostum army last week returned to Sherberghan to corral the prisoners
from Kunduz. After the fall of the last Taliban stronghold in the north, the
regime's fighters were packed into steel shipping containers and put on open
lorries.
The lorries were interspersed with the general's personal Washington-procured
cavalry: armoured personnel carriers and 4x4 off-roaders with satellite
telephone links.
Gen Atta Mohammed, a Tajik whose forces entered Mazar with Gen Dostum, told
The Sunday Telegraph last week that foreign prisoners would be handed over to
the United Nations.
He said: "We have taken all the prisoners to Sherberghan where they will be
quite safe. We have decided to forgive some of them, especially the Afghans.
The decision over what to do with the foreign ones we will leave with the UN."
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