Northern
alliance soldiers fire on Taliban positions in Kunduz province.
(CBS) With the Taliban regime on the verge of collapse, the United States
is hoping a $25 million reward will help convince Afghans to hunt down the No. 1
suspect in the terrorist attacks on America.
"Our hope is that the dual incentive of helping to free that country from a
very repressive regime ... coupled with substantial monetary rewards" will
convince "a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels
and caves looking for the bad folks," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said Monday.
President Bush said the "noose is beginning to narrow" around bin
Laden as Taliban-ruled areas in Afghanistan dwindled and the search for him
expanded.
"More and more territory (is) now in friendly hands," Mr. Bush told
reporters after a Cabinet meeting. "The more territory we gain, the more
success there is on the ground, the more people we've got looking to help us in
our mission."
Secretary of State Colin Powell said no country on the periphery of Afghanistan,
including China, would give bin Laden a haven.
"I don't think this fellow is going to be welcome anywhere," the
secretary said. "He is an outcast. He is a murderer, he's a terrorist. ...
He is on the run, just as the president said he would be. And we will get
him."
To spread word of the $25 million reward for getting bin Laden and a
"select few" of his lieutenants, the U.S. military is dropping
local-language leaflets "like snowflakes in December in Chicago,"
Rumsfeld said.
Intelligence officials believe he is in rural parts of Afghanistan, not under
northern alliance control -- meaning either southeast of Kandahar or around
cities like Jalalabad in the east or Kunduz in the north.
The Taliban's envoy to Pakistan said Saturday that bin Laden had left
Afghanistan, but that has not been substantiated. Later, the diplomat said he
meant only that bin Laden was outside areas under Taliban control.
U.S. bombers, meanwhile, continued to hit Taliban targets in Kandahar in the
south and Kunduz in the north, the only major cities still in the Islamic
militia's hands.
At Kunduz, foreign militants loyal to bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network —
mostly Arabs, Pakistanis and Chechens — were preventing their Afghan allies in
the Taliban from surrendering, refugees from the city said.
Refugees have said up to 300 Taliban fighters were shot — apparently by their
own side — as they tried to surrender Friday. Reports of other killings on a
smaller scale have also emerged in recent days.
The Taliban had offered over the weekend to leave Kunduz on condition of
guarantees of safety for the foreign fighters, a northern alliance commander
said. But other alliance commanders said Monday they doubted the Taliban were in
a position to negotiate since Arabs effectively control the city.
Alliance troops for the past several days had encircled the city without firing.
But on Monday they used two tanks, two artillery pieces and a multiple rocket
launcher to fire on Taliban positions in the hills.
Refugees who fled Kunduz to the nearby village of Bangi reported summary
executions by the besieged Taliban. One refugee, Dar Zardad, said Taliban killed
eight teen-agers for laughing at them and other fighters shot to death a doctor
who was slow to treat wounded Taliban.
The northern alliance asked the United Nations to find representatives from
Afghanistan's majority Pashtun ethnic group with whom the alliance can negotiate
over a new government. A conference between all Afghan factions was set to begin
Nov. 24 in Germany, most likely Berlin, a Pakistani diplomatic source, speaking
on condition of anonymity, said.
Following a meeting with alliance leaders in Afghanistan, U.S. envoy James F.
Dobbins said in Islamabad, Pakistan that he was convinced the leadership was
willing to compromise because "there is really a hunger for peace."
Four journalists, ambushed in Afghanistan Monday, have been confirmed as dead,
Italian Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero said.
The four – a television cameraman and a photographer working for the Reuters
news agency; a journalist with the Spanish daily El Mundo; and a journalist with
the Italian daily Corriere della Sera – were traveling from Pakistan to the
Afghan capital of Kabul when they were ambushed.
Ruggiero said their bodies would be flown home via the Red Cross in Kabul.
Backed by U.S. bombardment, the northern alliance swept the Taliban out of
northern Afghanistan last week and seized the capital, Kabul. The Taliban hold
also fell apart in the south, where local leaders took control of many areas.
In Kabul, television — banned for the past five years under the Taliban —
resumed broadcasting, with two hours of programming Sunday and Monday night. A
woman announcer, with her black hair partially covered with a scarf, read news
and promotions between public health programs, cartoons and music.
Kabul residents also swarmed the newly opened Bakhtar cinema, long closed by the
Taliban ban on movies. Hundreds of people who couldn't fit into the packed
theater jostled outside, blocking traffic. Finally, soldiers with rifles
intervened, pushing the crowd away from the front gate.
