Eyewitness to a Northern Alliance Assault

By Terry McCarthy/Chagatai Sunday, Nov. 11, 2001
    • The attack on Chagatai ridge begins at 3:20 p.m. local time on Saturday, when General Moammar Hassan of the Northern Alliance shouts into his radio, "Advance forwards. We are ready to start the war now." Twenty yards to the left of the command bunker where he stands, a T-55 tank opens up with its main gun, and the assault is on. Northern Alliance artillery shells and 82-mm mortars whiz overhead as a 50-cal. gun pops individual rounds at Taliban front lines, 1,000 yds. away across a small dip in the rolling brown hills.

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    This attack with several hundred troops is intended to punch a hole in a second Taliban front line in northern Afghanistan and begin a push on the city of Taloqan, 25 miles south of this ridge. The Alliance has some 5,000 troops along the 20-mile Taloqan front; estimates of Taliban strength range from 5,000 to 10,000, so the rebels are relying on U.S. bombing for advantage. The ultimate aim is to link up with troops who took Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday night and to advance on the Taliban stronghold of Kunduz, thus reclaiming the entire northern part of the country.

    For three hours on Saturday afternoon, U.S. fighter bombers have been hitting Taliban targets along the ridgeline. That morning General Hassan, the commander of the assault, told TIME that a team of U.S. special forces had come in the night before to coordinate the bombing. The Alliance brought in 21 tanks at midnight to add firepower, and they have been unloading on Taliban lines since midmorning. The morale of the Northern Alliance troops is high after the sudden fall of Mazar-i-Sharif the night before, and they jokingly predict that with U.S. help they will take Taloqan by Sunday.

    During the afternoon the Taliban returned fire sporadically, shooting rockets from its bunkered positions at the Alliance soldiers coming up from Dasht-i-Qaleh to the front line. These lines haven't moved in more than a year, and today the attack begins slowly. Hassan shouts into his radio, "Where are the soldiers? I ordered them to attack. Advance now." On the radio he gives out bombing coordinates, and two U.S. fighter jets appear overhead. Three hundred yards to the left of Hassan's position is another command post, where one of Hassan's officers says the American team is based. It cannot be seen from Hassan's position, but over the radio, Alliance commanders ask the Americans to give coordinates to the jets circling overhead.

    The Taliban has three command posts in the trench line that winds along the ridge. Early on, a tank shell scores a direct hit on the post on the right flank, but the center and the left prove harder to crack. "Shoot at the ones straight ahead. I can't see the ones on the left," Hassan tells Bashir, his tank commander, over the radio. The T-55 fires again. Twenty minutes into the attack, the shelling tempo increases; there is an explosion every couple of seconds. At 3:55 the Alliance troops on the right flank say the Taliban is fleeing, and they get out of an armored personnel carrier that has driven them to within 100 yds. of the Taliban trenches and move up the hill. Their commander radios the Americans to tell the planes to stop bombing the position, since Alliance troops are so close to it. "They are in the post," Bashir radios to Hassan.

    "Are you sure, or are they just saying that?" asks Hassan with a laugh. He surveys the battlefield, constantly kneading his prayer beads. His troops are meeting heavier resistance on the left flank. As they get out of their APC to try an assault, they are met with a crackle of AK-47 fire.

    At 4:10, after absorbing 50 min. of hard pounding, the Taliban troops suddenly start shelling Hassan's command post with a Russian artillery piece that had been hidden on the left flank. "They are like dogs. They never give up. They must be Arabs," says Hassan. He orders his tanks to aim at the artillery piece, but it keeps shooting back, each shell getting closer to Hassan's position. The closest round lands 25 yds. from the trench before some soldiers--and the handful of journalists observing them--withdraw.

    Hassan stays at his post, calling for reinforcements and correcting the coordinates for the artillery piece that is holding up his advance. On the third attack, his men use light artillery to take out the left bunker and find six dead Arab fighters inside. As night falls, the Alliance takes Chagatai ridge, but at a cost of six dead and 30 wounded. The Taliban again proves it will not give up without a fight.