Fall of Mazari Sharif - Aftermath

Aftermath

After the fall of the city, there were reports of jubilant excitement among locals, followed by reports of summary executions and the kidnapping of civilians by the Northern Alliance. The boys who were captured fleeing the school, were held as "slaves" and often sexually abused by their Northern Alliance captors who demanded a ransom from their families for their return.

It was also revealed that the airfield, the city's main prize for the Americans, had been badly damaged by their own bombardment of the city, and had been boobytrapped with explosives planted by the Taliban as they left in and around the property.

Following rumors that Mullah Dadullah may be headed to recapture the city with as many as 8,000 Taliban fighters, a thousand United States Army Rangers were airlifted into the city, which provided the first solid foothold from which Kabul and Kandahar could be reached. While prior military flights had to be launched from Uzbekistan or Aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea, now the Americans held their own airport in the country which allowed them to fly more frequent sorties against the Taliban frontlines, carrying heavier payloads.

The American-backed forces now controlling the city began immediately broadcasting from Radio Mazar-e-Sharif, the former Taliban Voice of Sharia channel on 1584 kHz, including an address from former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The foreign media outlets were still prohibited from access to American troops or access to battlesites at this time, meaning that the only information about Mazar-e-Sharif that was broadcast by Western outlets was the version of events dictated by the American military.

The battle created a rift in the NATO alliance between the United Kingdom and the United States, as the former charged that the aerial bombardment had been ill-advised, and that the United States had failed to pay sufficient attention to humanitarian concerns and had refused to consult with its allies.

The destroyed runways on the airfield were patched by local Afghans hired to fill bomb craters with asphalt and tar by hand, and the first cargo plane was able to land ten days after the battle. The airbase wasn't declared operational until December 11.

Despite some European papers' hesitancy to label the seizure of the city a military victory, others saw their retreat as the beginning of their demise. It is considered the first major defeat of the Taliban and its allies. This sentiment was seen in the British newspaper, The Times, claimed "The seizure of Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday represented the first substantial victory of the campaign…It made it possible, at last, to draw a cross on a map to show where the Taliban had been pushed back."