<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Ridgeway on Northern Alliance</title></head><body> <div> November 15, 2001 U.S.-Backed Rebels Accused of Wholesale Slaughter</div> <div>By James Ridgeway</div> <div>Village Voice   Welcomed here as a heroic, victorious force just yesterday, the Northern Alliance today  is being painted as a gang of murderers on the loose. The Pakistani press today  reports two alliance massacres of Taliban soldiers.   One involved the wholesale slaughter of 1,700 troops, many of them students from  Pakistan who'd joined the Taliban army south of Kabul. The Northern Alliance forces  were under the command of Afghanistan's Burhanuddin Rabbani, whom the alliance  reportedly named president of the country yesterday. They were also advised by  British and American military units inside Kabul.   According to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the American officers are there to  "provide advice and counsel" to the alliance.   Reports from Mazar-i-Sharif say several hundred Taliban supporters -- including Arabs,  Chechens, and Pakistanis -- were shot dead in a massacre after that city fell to the  alliance. A UN spokesperson said officials had received reports of hundreds of children  being massacred by Northern Alliance forces at one school. She disclosed that  alliance soldiers had looted many offices of the UN and other nongovernmental  organizations in Mazar-i-Sharif, according to the Pakistan News Service. In addition,  the UN said it fears the opposition troops may actually have shot some UN drivers.  UNICEF said it was postponing the sending of aid convoys into Afghanistan until the  situation becomes more stable. The World Food Program postponed its truck convoys  carrying food into Afghanistan because the drivers are frightened of reprisals.   While it may appear the U.S. and the Northern Alliance are mopping up pockets of  Taliban resistance, some argue the Taliban are not in disorganized retreat, but are  rather making a deliberate shift in their military strategy. This theory holds that Taliban  commanders are giving up towns and cities and moving as predicted into the  mountains, where they can conduct guerrilla raids on allied supply lines-just as the  mujahideen did in the war against the Russians.   This time it will be much more difficult. During the war against the Soviets, mujahideen  were well equipped by Pakistan and the CIA. Now, the U.S. has at least temporarily  neutralized Pakistan and made it harder for Taliban sympathizers there to ship  supplies across the mountainous border.   The danger here is that a guerrilla war, if not quickly snuffed out, could spread into  neighboring countries, especially Pakistan, where President Pervez Musharraf's  support for the American military campaign remains controversial.   Despite glowing press reports, intelligence estimates say the Taliban's arsenal of 250  to 300 Scud missiles remain hidden in the mountains. They are expected to be used  against cities captured by the Northern Alliance and perhaps for strikes into Pakistan,  Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.   Among the other oddities of the war are the weird alliances of troops in the field.  Various intelligence and press reports have U.S. Special Forces fighting in the north  alongside Iranian Special Unit men. Meanwhile, Chinese Muslims are said to be on the  Taliban lines. U.S. planes were reported to be zeroing in on a group of several  hundred Saudis who had been brought in to fight for the Taliban. If true, this last  would be yet another embarrassing development in U.S.-Saudi relations. </div> <x-sigsep><pre>-- </pre></x-sigsep> </body> </html>