Cell phones become link to the besieged

TERMEZ, Uzbekistan —  Clandestine telephone calls from civilians trapped in the strategic city of Mazar-e Sharif are painting a bleak picture of the Northern Alliance’s ground war in northern Afghanistan, with callers saying Taliban fighters not only beat back recent rebel offensives, but also are launching brutal reprisals against people accused of sympathizing with the opposition.

Using an ingenious network of code language and cellular phones, Afghans have told relatives in Uzbekistan that five prominent businessmen were hanged Sunday on treason charges in the Taliban stronghold. Hundreds more have been arrested as opposition sympathizers in surrounding villages, they say.

The callers also report that the Taliban regime is rapidly beefing up its forces in the region after thwarting attacks by U.S.-backed alliance troops two weeks ago. Many of the reinforcements are Arab and Pakistani volunteers, residents say.

Taliban soldiers have sent their families to safety, apparently girding themselves to defend the city to the bitter end, the callers noted.

Though none of the accounts could be verified, they suggest that the battle for Mazar-e Sharif, a crucial steppingstone in the U.S.-led campaign to topple the Taliban, may be long and bloody.

U.S. officials have made plain their desire to see the pivotal northern city fall swiftly and have stepped up air strikes around the city to support the ill-equipped Northern Alliance troops.

But the discreet phone calls trickling into this dust-blown town on the Uzbek border hint that the key logistical crossroads will not be captured soon -- at least not before snow falls.

“I don’t think the Americans realize how much work they still have to do,” said Abdul, an exiled Afghan shopkeeper who keeps tabs on his relatives in Mazar-e Sharif through brief, cryptic-sounding phone calls. “My relatives say the sounds of the battle are moving farther away, not closer.

“This means the Taliban is winning,” said Abdul, who asked that his full name not be used to protect his family in Afghanistan from retaliation. “So my relatives will continue to suffer in silence.”

War wraps city in mystery

Indeed, the plight of Mazar-e Sharif’s inhabitants -- like almost everything else in the war in Afghanistan -- has remained a mystery to the outside world. Access to the remote front lines often is restricted, and what little information seeps out usually comes via fiery Taliban propaganda or the satellite phones of opposition warlords.

But in the sleepy streets of Termez, an old Silk Road town on the banks of the Amu-Darya River that divides Uzbekistan from Afghanistan, an intriguing pipeline of news runs through the shops and businesses of the Afghan exile community.

Many of the immigrant families in town fled Mazar-e Sharif in 1998 when the Taliban took control of the city from the Northern Alliance, but they have maintained contact with family members using cellular telephones left behind in Afghanistan.

Even after Uzbekistan slammed shut its border, the phones have been ringing. Businessmen in Mazar-e Sharif, about 220 miles northwest of Kabul, are renting them in their stores on a per-call basis. Because of the border closure, payment for the Uzbek phone service is routed through banks in the United Arab Emirates.

Taliban officials tolerate the arrangement, the exiles say, because the handsets are the only link to the world for Mazar-e Sharif’s estimated 500,000 inhabitants.

“They have security men posted near each phone but we know when they come and go,” said Abdul, who like many northern Afghans supports the opposition fighters. “We call at odd times and use code words to ask questions.”

Demonstrating, he dialed a cell phone number in Mazar-e Sharif, his otherwise unreachable home only 50 miles away, across a desolate border strewn with land mines. A man answered and immediately began stammering, “Yes, yes, yes” -- a signal that a Taliban agent was present.

Phones a window to world

As haphazard as they are, such calls have opened a small window on daily life at one of the most important fronts in Afghanistan.

Callers describe a war-strangled city of ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras who hate the Taliban, but who also fear terrible reprisals if the Muslim militants are defeated.

The Taliban lost thousands of soldiers in fierce battles with Abdul Rashid Dostum, the opposition warlord who controlled Mazar-e Sharif until 1998. In reprisal, the Taliban is reported to have slaughtered thousands of citizens, especially Hazaras from the Shi’a sect of Islam, in taking rein of the city. .

Now, according to stories filtering out by phone, a similar pattern of payback is taking shape as Dostum and other Northern Alliance commanders press the fighting to within miles of the city, this time with U.S. help.

Several Afghan exiles using the phone links in Uzbekistan said that Taliban troops have rounded up hundreds of civilians in surrounding villages that were temporarily occupied in an offensive by the Northern Alliance two weeks ago. They said an unknown number of men from the communities of Marmul and Shodiyon were executed for welcoming the opposition forces.

Caller relates hangings

A man who called his family on Sunday added that five ethnic Uzbek businessmen had been hanged in Mazar-e Sharif for plotting against the Taliban.

“The Taliban know they don’t have the people’s support in Mazar-e Sharif, so they are terrorizing the population,” said the university professor who fled to Uzbekistan in 1997. “When I talk to my family, it is like talking to dead people. They have no anger or joy or anything in their voices. They are beyond despair.”

Food was still available in the city, he said, but people were reduced to selling household furniture to buy things to eat.

On the military front, the calls to Uzbekistan confirmed that the opposition forces had suffered a recent setback due to lack of coordination.

Abdul, the shop owner, said his relatives heard gunfire exchanges involving Northern Alliance forces on the city’s edge on Oct. 20. They told him the Taliban rallied to push back the insurgents and now the fighting was occurring at least 10 miles away.

Abdul said that U.S. bombs are still being dropped around the city and at the airport.

In one unconfirmed report from the embattled city, Abdul’s family said scores of Taliban troops had been killed last week when their convoy was rocketed by U.S. warplanes.

In other calls, frightened residents said the Taliban was forcibly conscripting young men. The government set a quota of two men from every neighborhood, exiles in Uzbekistan say, and imposed heavy fines on those who refused.

Also, a large number of fresh troops, many of them non-Afghans, are reported in the city.