Taliban leader offered to surrender

Mullah Saifur Rahman Mansoor, the Taliban commander who is resisting the U.S.-led air and ground assault on his mountain base in Shahikot, near Gardez had reportedly offered to surrender to the Afghan authorities in return for amnesty before the start of the attack last Friday.

However, his negotiations with representatives of Paktia Governor Taj Mohammed Wardak did not make headway.

Mansoor's supporters argued that the governor was unable to provide him guarantees of amnesty, hence the collapse of the talks. They felt local rivalries prevented an agreement that could have peacefully resolved the problem.

But Wardak maintained that Mansoor was lying to him with regard to his surrender and was buying time. He told reporters in the provincial capital, Gardez, that he had sent tribal elders in the form of a Jirga to convince Mansoor to expel Al Qaida members who had sought refuge with him and show allegiance to the Afghan interim government.

According to Wardak, there were about 60 Al Qaida men from different countries in Shahikot. He opined that the U.S. and Afghan forces would be able to capture Shahikot within three days as the Taliban and Al Qaida resistance in the face of the relentless American aerial strikes was breaking down.

However, it now appears that Wardak was over-optimistic when he made this prediction on Monday.

Some tribesmen from Zurmat district, sited near Shahikot, were quoted as saying that Mansoor was supposed to come down from his base the day the U.S. started bombing his positions. They said Mansoor was willing to assure the Afghan authorities in Gardez that he had no intention of fighting the Hamid Karzai government.

They claimed Mansoor had fortified himself in Shahikot because he was concerned that his local opponents would harm him. They said Mansoor had set up a religious school in Shahikot, which was a Mujahideen base set up by his late father, Maulvi Nasrullah Mansoor, to fight the Soviet occupation troops during the 1980s, after the collapse of the Taliban regime and sought to distance himself from politics.

Mansoor's supporters in Gardez and in rest of Paktia province maintained that there were no Arabs or Al Qaida fighters at Shahikot. They alleged that Mansoor's rivals had misled the U.S. military authorities by wrongly telling them that Shahikot was an Al Qaeda base. They said Mansoor was forced to fight back and defend his base once it was heavily-bombed by American warplanes.

However, Mansoor's opponents contended that he had provided sanctuary to the fleeing Arabs at Shahikot and stocked up arms and food to fight anyone approaching his mountain hideout. They felt Mansoor had invited trouble by refusing to dismantle the base or show allegiance to the interim government.