Mohammed Fahim - Reclaiming Kabul From The Taliban

Reclaiming Kabul From The Taliban

On September 13, 2001, Fahim was confirmed as the defence minister of the Northern Alliance, succeeding Ahmad Shah Massoud and thereby the new leader of the forces of the Northern Alliance. Massoud, Afghanistan's most important resistance leader, had been assassinated two days earlier on September 9, 2001 by al-Qaeda operatives posing as journalists. Fahim was a close ally and protégé of Massoud.

As general commander of the mujahideen resistance forces, he proclaimed an offesive on the northern and western fronts on 7 October, in the wake of building pressure of the US against the Taliban regime. ‘‘Today we have a chance to defeat the Taliban and the terrorists, and we will use it whatever the cost,’’ when he pledged to launch an attack against the Taliban without waiting for US military action. When the US started bombing Afghanistan, it became clear that his Northern Alliance would play an important role in the transition government that would emerge after the Taliban was ousted. However, since Fahim misses Massoud's magnetism, his role as opposition leader was generally seen as a temporary one. When in the first weeks of US bombardments Fahim's forces did not make any big breakthroughs, it was even speculated that he was struggling with his role and appeared wooden and awkward in front of his troops. But although Fahim was described as "colorless" it was clear that as the leader of the main military forces that were fighting the Taliban, Fahim had to play a central role in every possible government that could succeed the Taliban.

On October, 20, a US team of Green Berets landed in Afghanistan and teamed up with Fahim. On 30 October Fahim met with American General Tommy Franks in Tajikstan where they discussed the idea to launch the first major strike of the war against Mazar-i-Sharif, a city that Fahim a month earlier named as the first city that he would conquer. Mazar-e Sharif was captured by opposition forces in the beginning of November and on 13 November the Taliban evacuated from the Afghan capital Kabul. US President Bush had requested that opposition forces would not enter the city before a new, broad-based, multi-ethnic government was formed, but to be able to maintain order, Fahim went into the city with a group of specially trained security personnel, making sure to leave the main body of his troops outside the city. In these first days after the fall of Kabul, a supreme military council, headed by Fahim, was set up to administer the country. The military council gave itself a three month mandate in which they proclaimed not to hand over the power to Northern Alliance president Burhanuddin Rabbani. But before these three months ended the international community sponsored an conference on Afghanistan in Bonn to decide about the future leadership of the country. Fahim was reportedly advocating a broad-based government headed by someone outside the leadership of the United National Front. According to sources Fahim lobbied for Karzai as the next Afghan president instead for his formal leader Rabbani.

During the beginning of December 2001, with the crucial US military help, the opposition forces had captured as good as all of Afghanistan on the Taliban, and in Bonn there were new talks about the formation of an interim administration. In these talks Fahim took a leading role, together with two other young and moderate Tajik leaders from the United National Front (UNF), Yunus Qanuni and dr. Abdullah. The Bonn conference bypassed UNF President Burhanuddin Rabbani and appointed the Pashtun-leader Hamid Karzai as interim president, but Qanuni, Abdullah and Fahim all got crucial posts in the new government. Initially there was some fear that the trivium of former Massoud aides could overshadow chairman Karzai, but at the same time, they were praised for giving away the chairmanship while they controlled Afghanistan militarily. As commander of Afghans largest military force, Fahim got appointed Defence minister of Afghanistan. At the same time he was one of the five vice-chairs of the Interim Administration. The same day he stated he "would no longer accept foreign troops in Afghanistan operating without a UN mandate."

At this stage Fahim reportedly opposed to foreign military presence in Afghanistan. He demanded that 100 British servicemen who just had entered the country would leave Bagram Air Base. "The British forces perhaps have an agreement with the UN but not with us," said Fahim. In the end of November forces loyal to Fahim captured the city of Kunduz. That brought Fahim in charge of two of the five biggest cities, since other main cities were captured by militias of Gul Agha Sherzai and Hamid Karzai (Kandahar), Ismail Khan (Herat) en Abdul Rashid Dostum (Mazar-e Sharif). He remained weary about international intervention though. Following the Bonn Conference in December 2001, Fahim said that a UN force should not exceed 1000 men and that they should play a very limited role in Afghan politics and that his own forces could eradicate sources of instability in the country. Fahim wanted his own Northern Alliance forces to police Kabul, because, as Fahim stated, his troops in Kabul were security troops, not military.