Taliban Push Front Miles North Militia Already Rule Two-Thirds Of Afghanistan, Imposing Islam

Taliban soldiers advanced north Saturday with a fierce rocket and artillery attack, routing former Afghan government troops from a key mountain town and surrounding a strategic air base.

The governor of Kabul province, Kahirullah Kherkhaw, said the Taliban had “paralyzed” the Baghram air base and that Taliban troops in tanks and armored personnel carriers now control all the roads leading to it.

“Our aim was to control the hills around Baghram,” said Amirullah, a Taliban command spokesman. “We are not going any further for now.”

Taliban rulers say their goal is to gain total control of the country. That means they have to wrest the northern third of Afghanistan from an anti-Taliban alliance made up of the country’s minority ethnic groups.

Since Friday, when the Taliban religious militia renewed fighting, the front line has moved from 12 miles north of Kabul to more than 24 miles away from the beleaguered capital.

The Taliban has imposed its strict version of Islamic rule on the roughly two-thirds of Afghanistan it controls, forbidding women to work or study and forcing men to grow beards and pray. Since taking Kabul in September, it has declared itself the sole government.

On Saturday, Taliban troops pushed former government soldiers from the mountain resort town of Stalif, a stronghold of ousted military chief Ahmed Shah Massood. The loss was a blow to Massood’s soldiers, who had used the high ground to shell Taliban positions.

Witnesses said anti-Taliban soldiers, led by Massood and northern warlord Rashid Dostum, still occupied the air base. They use Baghram to launch air raids against Taliban positions at the front and in the capital, 30 miles away.

After a monthlong winter lull in fighting, the Taliban militia struck suddenly early Friday morning, catching the alliance by surprise.

The Taliban said as many as 60 enemy soldiers have been killed and another 200 taken prisoner. It said three Taliban fighters died in the battle.

The bodies of dozens of soldiers, many killed in the first hours, were still lying where they fell on the fields north of Kalakan, at the former front.

A few were covered with blankets. Groups of prisoners occasionally could be seen in the distance.

Kherkhaw said the Taliban struck because its enemies - especially Dostum - had refused to negotiate on the exchange of prisoners.

“Dead bodies, we have no use for, so we will give them back,” Kherkhaw told a delegate from the International Committee for the Red Cross, who came to claim the dead.

The villages along the sun-drenched road leading north from Kabul toward Baghram were deserted. Occasional groups of refugees were seen heading for the capital.

Fresh roadside graves were left unattended, their stones in pieces and their green flags - to mark the dead - in tatters.

Dostum’s jets continued to strike Taliban positions as far south as Kabul on Saturday. One plane dropped a cluster bomb just south of Qarabaq, but there were no reports of injuries.