KABUL, Afghanistan?The Taliban’s supreme leader radioed his commanders Wednesday and called on them to fight to the death against Americans in southern Afghanistan, where U.S. Marines were building up their forces at a desert base.
In Washington, U.S. officials said a small group of soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division has assembled outside the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to serve as a quick-reaction force in the event of renewed Taliban resistance. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the deployment comprised no more than two dozen soldiers. One official said the numbers might be increased.
The 10th Mountain Division had about 1,000 of its soldiers providing security at an air base across the border in southern Uzbekistan for several weeks, the officials said.
Also in the north, anti-Taliban forces began clearing the bodies of hundreds of fighters loyal to Osama bin Laden killed during a three-day prison uprising near Mazar-e-Sharif.
U.S. officials confirmed that CIA officer Johnny M. Spann was killed in the uprising?the first American combat death of the war against terrorism.
The Pentagon said Wednesday that U.S. airstrikes damaged a compound near the Taliban’s last stronghold, Kandahar, believed used by senior figures from the Taliban or bin Laden’s al Qaeda movement. It was unclear if any were killed.
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said a “confluence of intelligence” indicated that senior Taliban leaders were in the building, including supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, but “we do not have any sense Omar was there.”
However, the Pakistan-based South Asian Dispatch Agency quoted a Taliban spokesman, Mullah Abdul Wahab Khairkhwah, as saying Omar was “not too far” from the site when the attack occurred late Tuesday.
The agency quoted an unidentified Taliban official as saying Omar was whisked away at the last moment when militia counterintelligence noted the presence of two men suspected of working for the Americans.
“I think Tuesday was the last day for these two men,” the official was quoted as saying.
On Wednesday, the Taliban’s supreme leader told his commanders to hold fast.
“Stick to your positions and fight to the death,” Taliban official Hafiz Majidullah quoted Omar as saying. “We are ready to face these Americans. We are happy that they have landed here and we will teach them a lesson.”
At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem acknowledged that top Taliban leaders were still issuing orders, but said describing them as “still firmly in control would be an overstatement.”
“I think they have much less control than they have had in the past because they have much less access, again, to some of these intermediate leaders and to those forces,” he said Wednesday.
In the south, the Taliban leadership is trying to rally support as Pashtun tribal leaders seek to convince lower-ranking militia members to abandon the movement.
However, efforts to lure away Taliban support have been slow, in part because of tribal rivalry in the region of Afghanistan where the Islamic movement was organized in the early 1990s.
In the southern border town of Spinboldak, Taliban negotiators broke off talks Wednesday with Pashtun tribesmen about a possible surrender there after the non Taliban negotiators refused to guarantee the safety of Arabs loyal to bin Laden.