KABUL, Afghanistan (KRT) — The rout of Afghanistan’s Taliban extended into their ethnic Pashtun homeland Tuesday with the capture of Jalalabad, even as the Taliban’s supreme leader urged his retreating troops to regroup and stop running around “like slaughtered chickens.”
Gunfire was also reported near Kandahar, spiritual capital of the Taliban, heartland of the Pashtuns and a city where they may gather their forces for a final stand against opposition fighters in hot pursuit.
American warplanes struck fleeing Taliban forces outside Kabul, the capital, as United Front officials took control of the city. Freed from five years of Taliban rule, men in Kabul celebrated by shaving off mandated beards and throwing away turbans.
City residents also dug up once-forbidden televisions and played music, which also had been banned.
The U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition is hoping that the United Front’s victories in Kabul and the north will persuade Pashtuns in southern Afghanistan to rebel against the Taliban.
Two American missionaries held prisoner by the Taliban in Kabul had not been found in the city, and Taliban officials told their families they were taken to Kandahar.
Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden and members of his al-Qaeda terrorist network remained at large.
“We’re going to get them,” said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at a Pentagon briefing. “I doubt that they’ll find peace wherever they select.”
Rumsfeld said the Taliban and al-Qaeda “continue to have large numbers of forces.” He cautioned that neither the quick advances Tuesday nor the eventual apprehension of bin Laden would end what is still likely to be a long war against terrorism.
“The war is not about one man or one terrorist network or even one country,” Rumsfeld said.
The United Front seized Kabul and most of the Afghan north in a four-day offensive. The alliance sent troops into Kabul despite American requests that it remain on the outskirts until a new political order could be established. Alliance officials said they ordered their military to enter the city after the Taliban abandoned Kabul and armed groups began to loot it.
The fall of Jalalabad, 146 miles southeast of Kabul, marked the first Taliban loss of a city dominated by Pashtuns, who make up 40 percent of Afghanistan’s population of 25 million people and the overwhelming majority of Taliban ranks.
Most of the United Front’s fighters are members of Afghanistan’s Uzbek, Tajik and Shiite Muslim Hazara minorities, traditional rivals of the Sunni Muslim Pashtuns.
Taliban fighters stole out of Jalalabad without firing a shot Tuesday after receiving a warning from warlord Abdul Qadir to leave or face attacks by his anti-Taliban forces, journalists in the city reported.
The Taliban reportedly headed east and then south to Kandahar, birthplace of the Taliban in 1994.
Heavy gunfire was heard Tuesday at the airport southeast of Kandahar, but there was no immediate explanation, said three Afghan exiles who have been in telephone contact with relatives in Kandahar.
Several hundred Taliban were cut off and surrounded in the northern town of Kunduz, the anti-Taliban alliance said. They included Pakistanis, Chechens, Uzbeks, and Uighurs fighting alongside the Taliban. Among them, the alliance said, were Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev, the leaders of a group with ties to bin Laden called the Islamic Movement for Uzbekistan.
“We have surrounded Kunduz and soon, we will attack,” said Ashraf Nadeem, a United Front spokesman, in a satellite phone interview from Mazar-e-Sharif. “The foreign fighters with ties to bin Laden are in the center of Kunduz. They have played into our hands and cannot escape.”