New Battle Looms In Afghanistan Refugees Fleeing Toward Kabul; U.N. Envoy Meets With Warlord

The rebel fighters who control most of Afghanistan clamored over the mountains north of Kabul on Wednesday, tightening their siege on the lone valley still in the hands of former government soldiers.

Several hundred refugees anticipating more fighting were seen heading south toward Kabul, lugging bags of clothes and leading young children. They said the two sides were squared off about three miles apart.

Meanwhile, a U.N. envoy tried desperately to prevent separate outbreaks of fighting in a nearby part of the country. Norbert Holl met with northern warlord Rashid Dostum at his headquarters in Mazar-e-Sharif.

Dostum’s army of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, which controls most or all of seven northern provinces, is the only force standing in the way of complete Taliban control of Afghanistan. The warlord has reportedly sent 40,000 troops to bolster his front line.

So far, Dostum has taken a neutral position between the government troops and Islamic rebels.

There was no word late Wednesday on the progress of Holl’s shuttle diplomacy. After meeting with Dostum, he flew to Kabul to meet the Taliban rebels, who captured the capital last week.

The Taliban militia, made up of seminary students and clerics who want to impose their version of strict Islamic law on Afghanistan, have routed most of the smaller armies that have been fighting for years.

In taking the capital Friday, the rebels overran fighters loyal to Ahmed Shah Massood, who had been shoring up the regime of President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

The remnants of Massood’s army are now trapped in the Panjshir Valley, about 150 northwest of Kabul. His soldiers have dynamited the entrance to the valley and reportedly laid dozens of land mines in the area.

But Wednesday, bearded Taliban soldiers with Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers slung over their shoulders hiked through the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains aiming for the Panjshir Valley. They vowed to chase Massood out of Afghanistan or capture him and put him on trial as a war criminal.

Most Taliban fighters belong to Afghanistan’s majority Pashtuns, and the possibility of a bloody ethnic war with Dostum looms if the two sides fail to reach an agreement at the negotiation table.

Hedging their bets, both have expressed a willingness to negotiate while still preparing for battle.

“We have no plans to fight Dostum if he surrenders, but if he doesn’t, we are ready,” said Sher Khan, a Taliban fighter at the front line, 90 miles north of Kabul.

“We are prepared for war if Taliban forces move to our positions, ” said Fateh Khan, a spokesman for Dostum in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.