Despite US, Afghan rebels approach Kabul

The fate of Kabul presents to the US a fine-line dilemma that is difficult to draw with bombs alone: How far can the US help its proxy allies in Afghanistan in overthrowing the Taliban, while ensuring that the alliance stops short of taking the biggest prize?

US officials are concerned that control of the city by the alliance, which is largely made up of ethnic minorities, could result in ethnic bloodletting like that began in Kabul in 1992 that left tens of thousands dead when dominant Pashtuns rejected their rule.

Senior alliance officers say that this time their forces are fully under their control, and that they have orders to stop at the gates of the city. At that moment they will decide what to do.

"We will stay there, but if we see the Taliban resist or looting in Kabul, we will send some security forces there," says Gen. Fazil Ahmad Azimi, as he described the offensive at the front. "The Taliban has been making propaganda that there will be some Pashtun revenge, and that's 100 percent wrong. We will announce a common peace for everyone."

Alliance troops say their hope of an imminent offensive turned to despair Saturday, when they heard reports of President Bush and Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf. Bush said the US would "encourage our friends to head south ... but not into the city of Kabul itself. Mr. Musharraf warned of "total atrocities, killing, and mayhem."

"We were very much surprised and depressed," said Colonel Khan. "It was like pouring cold water into boiling water."

Still, thousands of troops yesterday prepared for war north of Kabul. Rebels cleared their own minefields overnight to open the way; uniformed Zarbati (strike force) troops - many of them from Kabul - gathered before dawn. As the troops loaded into trucks to move forward from Kapisa, the arcing contrail of an American B-52 bomber - the first of many yesterday - cut a perfect semi-circle across the blue sky.

"If the Americans bomb, we can easily move forward," says Major Kamran, as his troops await the final order to advance. "Everybody knows it is effective, and if they bomb, we will have many less soldiers dead."

As the offensive got under way around 2 p.m., the alliance fired off more than a dozen volleys of rocket fire from a bank of Stalin Organ launchers near the Bagram airfield.

Reports came in of 30 to 40 Taliban cornered in one village; hundreds of Taliban defected to the alliance in another. General Babajan, chief of the Bagram Front, was overheard on a secret frequency, describing how alliance troops had broken the first of the Taliban's three defensive lines, but that the Taliban - bolstered by 300 Pakistani and Arab troops earlier in the day - were counter-attacking on the second line. The alliance later broke through the second.

All the front-line action meant radios kept blaring. "We capture a Taliban hiding in a garden!" came one urgent message from an alliance officer. "We have him, so don't shoot at our position."

But there were moments of relative calm, too. As the last pastel of light from the sky disappeared from the sky, General Azimi stopped his car along a Bagram road.

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