|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Behalf Of Dennis
||
|| On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Hakki Alacakaptan wrote:
||
|| > I wonder what everybody is thinking when thousands of Qaeda
|| fighters are
|| > loaded on Pakistani transports and whisked away under the noses of US
|| > AWACSes.
||
|| Do you have credible evidence that this is so? If so, let's hear it.
Pakistan air force seen evacuating foreign fighters from Kunduz http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?dir=71&story=106824 &host=3&printable=1
By Marcus Tanner 26 November 2001 As Northern Alliance troops prepared yesterday to enter Kunduz, fears that the city's fall might result in a massacre of foreign-born Taliban fighters may have been averted by a secret deal hatched between Pakistan and Northern Alliance commanders, with Washington's compliance.
Fighters round the city have reported spotting Pakistan air force planes arriving and departing Kunduz over the past few nights, allegedly transporting Pakistani fighters from the encircled Taliban enclave to safety. At least three Pakistani aircraft were seen landing in Kunduz in the middle of last week, and two more were sighted subsequently.
The Pentagon, which is monitoring the situation round Kunduz in detail, has been evasive on the subject and has said it has no information about the landings. Pakistani officials have also declined to comment.
The sightings are almost certainly not the result of the fighters' imagination. (...) ---------------------
Mysteries in Kunduz After the Taliban Fled Dexter Filkins New York Times Service Wednesday, November 28, 2001
http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId =40290 (...) The village sits across the road from the Kunduz airport, where no regular commercial flight has landed or taken off in more than a year.
"An airplane landed every night for the past 12 days," said Gul Muhammad, 35, a shop owner.
Another local merchant, Salahuddin, 24, added: "Every day the Taliban soldiers came in trucks and went into the airport. The planes left, and the troops went with them."
The villagers said they had not seen the planes, only heard them. They also said that American jets had bombed the airport repeatedly, and that Taliban crews had come out almost every day to fix the runway.
The villagers at Angurbagh also seemed to confirm another assertion of Northern Alliance officials: that airplanes landed as late as Sunday, and that one plane tried to land on Sunday night and veered off when the pilot apparently realized that the airport was no longer in the hands of the Taliban. (...)