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Taliban to Quit Kandahar, Sources Say
Friday, November 16, 2001
(5:44 PM ET) (22:44 GMT)
The Cable News Network
A U.S. soldier on the ground near Kabul, Afghanistan.
Photo Credit: The Associated Press.
Rumsfeld said a "modest number" of U.S. special operations troops are operating in southern Afghanistan and engaging Taliban forces.
QUETTA, Pakistan -- CNN /b>
Under pressure from tribal leaders, Afghanistan's Taliban agreed to withdraw from their political and spiritual base in Kandahar late Friday.
Sources affiliated with a group of Pashtun tribal leaders told CNN that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, agreed Friday night to withdraw his forces from Kandahar and turn control of the city over to his top military commander, Haji Bashar.
The move follows more than a month of U.S. bombardment and a week of battlefield setbacks that have left the fundamentalist Muslim militia in control of only a third of the country, according to U.S. estimates.
Between 80 and 100 tribal leaders met in Quetta to give the Taliban an ultimatum -- surrender within a week or face an attack by well-armed Pashtun tribesmen from six southern Afghan provinces. Their point man, Abdul Khaliq, traveled to Kandahar on Friday evening to deliver that message in person, the sources said.
(More: CNN.com News Source)
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Taliban to Quit Kandahar, Sources Say . . .