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Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mustafa Omar’s Taliban military forces are abandoning their southern stronghold in Kandahar and heading north to the towering Hindu Kush mountains, reports DEBKA-Net-Weeky.
Despite Iran Radio reports that bin Laden had fled to Pakistan, military sources tell DEBKA that the al-Qaida leader and his fighters are heading north with the Taliban.
The complex logistical operation is scheduled for completion by the weekend, according to DEBKA. Bin Laden is said to be personally overseeing the operation.
In recent days, under intense U.S. aerial bombardment, the joint command collected their 50,000 strong armies from around Afghanistan and moved them over hundreds of miles to pre-specified points in the southeast and northeast of Afghanistan. They are now on their way to meet up in the Hindu Kush and Pamir Mountains, which the onset of winter has already made impassable.
From their mountainous strongholds, the Taliban and al-Qaida troops will make forays into the neighboring mountain areas of Tajikistan, the Pakistani and Indian sectors of Kashmir and the northwest Chinese province of Xinjiang.
Accordingly, the 201st Russian mechanized rifle division, specially trained in anti-terrorist mountain combat, has been placed on the ready and deployed in the Pamirs on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan frontier, to stave off any possible infiltration by the retreating troops.
From Kashmir comes word that the local Indian commander has ordered the 16th and 21st Corps of the Indian army to take up positions in the mountainous regions between India and Pakistan, with the 15th Corps in Leh also on the ready, to head off any incursions.
When he ordered Kahandar evacuated, Omar left south of Kabul a Taliban contingent to cover the retreat and provide a safe corridor from Kabul and Jalalabad, up which the main force is due to head for the mountains in the next 48 hours. Small knots of U.S. Special Forces have been trying to block or slow the retreat. Their presence has forced U.S. bombers to hold off bombing the retreating force.
Once the southern contingents are safe in the mountains, the 20,000 Taliban and al-Qaida troops fighting in the northern stronghold of Konduz will also begin moving out and heading for the mountains.
The U.S., Russian and Northern Alliance commands grasped today that fierce battles in Konduz were no more than a rearguard action to give the southern units time to settle into the underground bases prepared for them in the mountains. Already, the desertion of Konduz has begun, as small groups of fighting men join their comrades in the mountain hideouts. They make their way up smugglers’ tracks by night to escape detection, so that the evacuation may take as long as Monday or Tuesday to accomplish.
By the time the Northern Alliance break through into Konduz, they are likely to find the enemy gone.
If the Taliban and al-Qaida commanders manage to pull this tactic off to the finish, it will be a mark of their ability to move fast and of their exceptional operational resilience. Since last Monday, when the Northern Alliance launched its lightning advances, the Taliban and al-Qaida have withdrawn from most parts of Afghanistan at relatively low cost in casualties, moving a 40,000-50,000 strong army all the way to fortified mountain bases.
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