Τα ιδια ειπαμε λεγανε και για το Αφγανισταν οπου αντι για Κουρδους βαλε Βορεια Συμμαχια. Οσο κερδισανε εκει περα αλλο τοσο θα κερδισουνε και στην Συρια.
TALIBAN rule over northern Afghanistan ended yesterday, as the city of Kunduz fell to the Northern Alliance in a matter of hours.
The two-week siege of Kunduz had been billed by alliance commanders as the last stand of thousands of fanatical foreign terrorists, who were sworn to fight to the death rather than surrender.
Yet, when the end came it had less to do with military prowess, planning and might, than with deal-making, pragmatism and, in the background, the terrifying psychological impact of relentless American air strikes.
The US planes bombed the city for the last time before dawn yesterday morning. The largely unscathed streets, and the smouldering wreckage of military vehicles in a hilltop citadel paid testament to the apparent precision of the air raids.
Abdul Jamil, a shopkeeper, said: "The bombs fell on Taliban bases, only a little on local people."
The freshly liberated city offered a mixture of menace, and startling normality. Large numbers of heavily armed alliance troops patrolled the streets, swinging rifles, machine-guns or rocket propelled grenades.
Boy soldiers sat, yawning, in battered lorries and armoured personnel carriers, as bursts of gunfire rang out on the city limits. Nearby, a Taliban pick-up truck riddled with bullets offered a rare sign of fighting.
On the main road into town, a handful of bakeries and food shops had re-opened, bright heaps of radishes and carrots offering a rare splash of colour.
The men of the city, wearing turbans and white skull caps, gathered in the main traffic circle to gawp. Small gaggles looked at passing tanks, the alliance flag flying from the police post at the centre of the square, or the body of a dead Talib on the pavement.
Conquering troops waved and gave thumbs up signs to foreign journalists, but wary locals were not waving or cheering in return. Kunduz has a large ethnic Pathan population, raising fears of reprisals by alliance forces, who regard Pathans as natural allies of the Taliban.
When the alliance forces entered the city at 7.30 yesterday morning, the feared thousands of Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks and Pakistanis were nowhere to be seen. After a few outbursts of vicious street fighting, and tense negotiations with Taliban holed up in a mosque, the battle was largely over.
Gen Daoud Khan, the conqueror of Kunduz, accused Pakistan - the power behind the Taliban - of airlifting large numbers of foreign fighters to safety. He said many of the Taliban had retreated from Kunduz to the district of Chardarah to the west of the city. Gen Daoud said urgent negotiations for their surrender were going on.
Thousands of Taliban, including at least 600 foreigners, abandoned the fight over the weekend, surrendering to alliance commanders east and west of the city. The Afghans among them walked away as free men, after handing over their weapons.
Alliance forces encountered sporadic resistance and ambushes by the Taliban as they entered the city. One local resident, Abdul Satar, described a night and morning of terror as gunfire rang out in the city streets.
"We were afraid. There were Taliban on the streets, but no ordinary people. I saw some Kandahari Taliban stage an ambush at 8am.
"There was fighting in the centre of the city, and all the ordinary people ran to their houses. They used machineguns and rockets. There were about seven or eight Taliban killed in the street," he said.
Looting was at the forefront of many alliance soldiers' minds. Hours after the fall of Kunduz, the highway out of the city was choked with stolen Taliban vehicles.
Those that could not be driven themselves were towed away, in a winding, clanking procession of lorries towing lorries, lorries towing guns, even a lorry towing a van towing a pick up truck.
An alliance tank commander, Farid Ahmad, said: "If they had stayed, we would have taken revenge on them."
The commander was now bracing himself for one final battle to rid northern Afghanistan of the Taliban. "Tell George Bush," he cried excitedly, "they are crowded into Chardarah: bomb, bomb."