Global Policy Forum

By Justin Huggler

The Taliban have pleaded formally with the United Nations to arrange the unconditional surrender of their forces besieged inside the northern Afghan city of Kunduz. However, the top UN envoy for Afghanistan said the UN had no presence on the ground, "and simply cannot unfortunately accede to this request".

Lakhdar Brahimi said a religious leader and another unidentified person formally approached the UN in Islamabad on Monday night saying that Taliban commanders from inside Kunduz wanted to surrender unconditionally and wanted to do it to the UN.

He said the UN secretary general Kofi Annan had been in touch with the Northern Alliance, whose forces are outside the city, and members of the international coalition, asking that they "respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and treat this question with as much humanity as possible".

Thousands of Taliban troops are trapped in and around Kunduz, their every possible means of escape cut off by the Northern Alliance troops who surround them. Among them, say Alliance commanders, are 1,000 members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'ida network and more than 10,000 foreign Taliban volunteers who appear determined to fight to the death.

Anxious to avoid a bloodbath, the Alliance is holding back from attacking the city while it tries to help negotiate the Taliban's surrender. But grim tales come out of the city of the foreigners massacring Afghan Taliban who try to defect.

The United States has pulled the rug out from under the negotiators' feet, saying it would vehemently oppose any solution that would allow the al-Qa'ida fighters to escape. The US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, on Monday told reporters he would prefer the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed, rather than to be allowed to escape alive from Afghanistan.

Taliban commanders inside Kunduz have reportedly said that the foreign fighters are prepared to surrender if they are given a UN guarantee of safe passage from Afghanistan. But Mr Rumsfeld said he would do everything he could to prevent them being allowed to leave Afghanistan. "My preference is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner," he said.

As many as 470 Afghan Taliban are said to have been killed in three separate alleged incidents in the past five days.

"I am not optimistic that the foreigners will surrender," General Mohammed Daud of the Northern Alliance said yesterday. He said 20,000 Taliban still remain in Kunduz, more than 10,000 of them foreigners. The 1,000 al-Qa'ida fighters include a senior commander of the network, Omar al-Khatab, he claimed.

American planes are pounding the Taliban in and around Kunduz, but on the front lines the Northern Alliance guns remain silent. The Alliance has Kunduz surrounded on all sides. To the west are the forces of the Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum, whose victory in Mazar-i-Sherif prompted the collapse of the Taliban across Afghanistan. To the east are an array of warlord's private armies, under the command of General Daud.

The Alliance has not attacked, General Daud said yesterday, because it wants to avoid "widespread bloodshed and destruction".

It is not only the blood of the Taliban he is worried about. Last week, Northern Alliance troops walked into a Taliban ambush, fooled by false reports that the Taliban in Kunduz had surrendered. More than 50 soldiers were killed, according to one commander.

The Alliance's sensational victories across Afghanistan have been on the back of defections by Afghan Taliban who saw which way the wind was blowing. Many of the Alliance troops now besieging Kunduz were Taliban a week ago.

If the last of the Taliban put up a serious defence of Kunduz, the battle could be far bloodier than anything yet seen. The Americans may be eager for the al-Qa'ida fighters to be killed or captured, but the Northern Alliance are far from eager to walk into the lion's den on America's behalf.

With the Taliban's rule in Afghanistan all but consigned to history, already there are signs of cracks in the loose alliance of warlords that toppled them – even between the different commanders besieging Kunduz. General Dostum said yesterday that two senior Taliban commanders were travelling to Mazar to negotiate with him. General Daud denied it. General Daud is a member of the ethnic Tajik-dominated hardcore of the Northern Alliance once led by Ahmad Shah Massood, who are calling the shots at the moment because it was they who walked into Mazar. Usually General Dostum would be a far more powerful warlord than General Daud. Already, the warlords are jostling for position.

The easy collapse of the Taliban has shown how few Afghans were ideologically committed to their fundamentalist rule. The former Taliban now manning Northern Alliance front lines are in it strictly for themselves.

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