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Taliban fighters open fire, die©Los Angeles TimesNovember 17, 2001 KAREZ-I-MIR, Afghanistan -- On the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, when Muslims renew their faith in God, a small group of Taliban fighters came down from the mountains and made a feeble attempt to start a guerrilla war by shooting at passing cars. They managed only to get themselves killed. Their three corpses lay in the dirt just north of Kabul on Friday, and every bus, taxi, truck and car on the newly opened road stopped as it came upon the scene. Over the hours, hundreds of people got out of their vehicles and streamed up the hill on the side of the road. They looked like pilgrims hurrying to visit a holy site. Instead, many of them stopped at each Taliban fighter's body, picked up a rock and hurled it on the corpse. As the rocks and stones piled up, the Taliban soldiers were slowly buried. Many Afghans see the Taliban as a foreign-created force, filled with large numbers of foreigners. These soldiers were Arabs, they said. But the only proof they could offer was the color of their skin, saying that Afghans' skin is darker. Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's reclusive leader who is thought to be besieged in the southern city of Kandahar, said this week that his forces would never surrender but would instead take to the mountains and wage a guerrilla war. Abdul Sattar, a Northern Alliance commander responsible for securing this area, insisted the fighters were hardly a new wave of Taliban guerrillas but instead were desperate men. Without food and unable to communicate with local Afghans without giving themselves away as foreigners, they have no choice but to fight until they are killed, the 44-year-old commander said. The bodies of at least nine Taliban soldiers, apparently killed after ambushes on civilian cars, were strewn Friday along the main road into Kabul. "These are some Arabs whose links are broken with the Taliban," Sattar said. "They were in the caves, and the Taliban have fled. These Arabs see their lives in danger because they have done nothing good and they know that they will be killed. ... It is really suicide for them." It was literally that, Sattar claimed, for five of six Taliban fighters who died on a mountainside Friday, roughly three miles from where the others were killed after opening fire on passing cars from nearby bunkers. About 20 of Northern Alliance soldiers went up the mountainside riding atop an armored personnel carrier and in the back of a truck. About 20 minutes later, people in the crowd straining to see from the roadside thought they saw a small group of Taliban fighters walking down toward the alliance forces in surrender. "When infantry attacked them, those Arabs started firing," Sattar said. "Then the armored personnel carrier went toward them, and the Arabs jumped onto it. After that, we killed one of them. Then the others knew they'd be arrested ... and they blew themselves up." But at such a distance, the only thing clear was the bright flash of an explosion, and the sound of several bursts from a heavy machine gun. The Taliban soldiers were dead.
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