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And American soldiers held captive in Afghanistan? That’s what the Asia Times’ Syed Saleem Shahzad is reporting:

United States and Pakistani intelligence officials have met with Taliban leaders in an effort to devise a political solution to prevent the country from being further ripped apart.

According to a Pakistani jihadi leader who played a role in setting up the communication, the meeting took place recently between representatives of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Taliban leaders at the Pakistan Air Force base of Samungli, near Quetta. (Via Jim Henley and Jesse “Pandagon“)

Among the conditions the US is reportedly setting for “any sort of reconciliation” are that any US or allied soldiers held captive must be released. Also: Mullah Omar deposed, Pakistani and Saudi fighters out.

I remember noting a late September 2001 German language relay of an Al Jazeera report about US soldiers taken prisoner — before “Enduring Freedom” was officially underway. I didn’t ever develop much faith in Al Jazeera, and nothing seemed to come of it, so I forgot about it. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

And yes, this is terrible news, if it’s true — any of it: prisoners, negotiations, Taliban share of power, any of it.

That’s the title of Katha Pollitt’s attempted dismissal of Christopher Hitchens in the latest edition of the Nation. Pollitt delivers a number of well-placed jabs at the pompous Orwell wannabe who, despite being an avowed contrarian, left the bulliest pulpit possible for debating the anti-war left. But these jabs weren’t among them:

Sure, there are plenty of people (not all of whom are leftists) who oppose this war because they oppose all US military intervention on principle, and maybe there is even some graduate student out there, mind addled by an all-Ramen diet, who believes that Osama bin Laden is merely a “misguided anti-imperialist.” But surely you know that lots of people oppose invading Iraq who supported the war in Afghanistan and intervention in Kosovo–why aren’t Mark Danner, Aryeh Neier and Ronald Dworkin on your radar screen? Who died and made Ramsey Clark commissar?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Pollitt pretty firmly in the anti-Afghanistan-war camp? Here’s what she wrote on September 20 a year ago, in “Put Out No Flags“:

Bombing Afghanistan to “fight terrorism” is to punish not the Taliban but the victims of the Taliban, the people we should be supporting. At the same time, war would reinforce the worst elements in our own society–the flag-wavers and bigots and militarists.

As was her perfect right of course, but it seems pretty disingenuous for Pollitt to make those particular comments about Ramen-addled grad students or those “lots of people who supported the war in Afghanistan.”

At minimum, she might have acknowledged Hitchens was righter than she was about Afghanistan, or explained why she was right after all about that not being the right way to tackle the “more difficult task of going after Al Qaeda,” the task she’s now focused her laser beams on. Hitchens is hard to take, but as it stands, it seems to me he at least got one person right: Pollitt.

(Article and pull quote via Electrolite’s Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who is more appreciative.)

Via Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful Things):

I say burn him.

Comic relief, in which a harried Mr. Taliban learns he should have bought an answering machine. (ActiveX; via Welcome to the Sideshow, by Avedon Carol).

A German TV crew for WDR/ARD happened to be at Mazar-e-Sharif for an interview with Northern Alliance general Dostum when the prison uprising occurred. The chief correspondent, Arnim Stauth, lent his satellite phone to the CIA/special forces guy who was there (”David”) to call for help, and ultimately for air support.

According to a reliable fellow day-care parent source, WDR correspondent Arnim Stauth actually got criticized for this by fellow German journalists. Well, actually, not for doing it, more for admitting he’d done it: after some chin-pulling, it was apparently decided that the proper thing would have been to go ahead and do it, but just not reveal that. Not that there’s anything wrong with TRYING TO SAVE YOUR LIFE FROM A BUNCH OF SUICIDAL FANATICS. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any other information on-line about this “controversy.”

Mr. Stauth’s radio and TV reports all bear out the treachery of the Taliban/Al Qaeda prisoners, the chaotic situation inside the prison, and the desperate situation he, the American, and the Northern Alliance soldiers found themselves in, with gunfire interrupting the conversations with the WDR home office several times. (The web page headline translates to “..I can’t talk any more, we’re getting out of here.” A second headline reads “That was obviously a Taliban trap.”) At one point early on, the N.A. forces at the prison were actually running low on ammunition; many had returned to Kunduz, reported Stauth, to rejoin the celebration there.

From a vivid Times of London account of the fall of Kunduz:

Merwis Shakar, 25, a shopkeeper, said: “You would be beaten if you did not grow your beard or if you walked down the street with your head uncovered. The problem with the Taleban is they treated you like you were a woman.”

Pity a boy described in the same article:

At that moment seven Taleban emerged from their hiding place, firing a volley of shots and tossing a hand grenade. Panic swept through the crowd and several people were knocked to the ground in a stampede. The attackers were eventually subdued and led away with their elbows bound behind their backs with their black silk turbans, to join the other prisoners being held in subterranean cells at the Taleban’s former headquarters, a turquoise building with a rose garden south of the city.

The dungeons presented a nightmarish scene: inside one stinking, mud-walled cell, with a ceiling so low that its occupants needed to crouch, were a dozen or more men in deep despair.

In one corner was a shaven-headed boy small enough to stand upright. When asked his name he opened his mouth, but in his terror no words came out.

Many of the Taliban fighters (whether native or Pakistani), were probably kids like this, often straight from some madrassa, a sorry kind of Koran-thumping school that is the only taste of education for many in those parts. I don’t intend this note to condemn the war. It is right to destroy Al Qaeda and its Taliban co-conspirators, and thereby defend ourselves. But this child is almost certainly a victim, too. May he make it out alive, and may we not rue that day.

This could become huge. A prison riot staged by surrendering Kunduz Taliban has ended in a bloodbath. U.S. aircraft and Northern Alliance tanks fired on rioting Taliban, including many “foreigners,” who apparently smuggled some weapons in to their prison in Mazar-E-Sharif. I anticipate this will be trumped up in to a “My Lai” incident, despite the details apparently suggesting otherwise. Batten down the hatches in Islamabad? Reports:

• Time Magazine reporter Alex Perry provides an eyewitness account during the fight: American G.I.s Battle the Taliban
  

  So there were none or few NA guards?

  There were a few Northern Alliance guards and they were the only ones that had the weapons, but by simple sheer force of numbers the Taliban could overwhelm them. That was a very bad I think. And then we saw a lot of Northern Alliance soldiers fleeing, some of them dropped their guns. I should also say that there are two Reuters journalists trapped inside there.

  Any others trapped?

  Maybe some Northern Alliance people as well. Well, almost certainly. It’s gone quiet now. Suddenly. But the trouble was that the Taliban had gotten themselves into a position in the fort where they had access to the armory.

  Were they kept close to the armory?

  I don’t know where they were kept. I think they were kept in the basement. Then stormed out of the basement and stormed Southwest part of the fort where there were six or seven jeeps full of ammunition. That was, in fact, what the Americans were trying to hit. To destroy their supplies [and] provide one almighty explosion that would kill a lot of them.

  The NA don’t keep their weapons under lock and key?

  No, they’re incredibly casual with their weapons. They just lay them against the wall, lie them on the ground. They’re always on their sholder or just knocking against the back of a chair [Gun shot]. When you leave in the morning, you put your shoes on, put your hat on and get your gun.

  Pretty riveting report (via Matt Welch). Perry added that he heard that 3,400 Taliban were dead; the 800 figure mentioned early on were the recent arrivals from Kunduz.

• Guardian: Mass breakout ends in bloodbath
  

  At least 500 Taliban prisoners broke down their jail doors and tried to fight their way to freedom with Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns and grenades which they had smuggled into the fort, witnesses said.

  Footage from a German television crew showed guards on the walls of the compound firing down into crowds of prisoners below. A US special forces soldier was seen calling in air strikes from a satellite telephone. “There’s hundreds dead here at least,” he said.

  “They were all killed and very few were arrested,” said Zaher Wahadat, a Northern Alliance spokesman.

• Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR Radio, subsidiary or partner of ARD Television, Germany, which had a reporter on the scene): Nordallianz richtet Blutbad an (Northern Alliance commits bloodbath)
  

  Up to 500 foreign mercenaries have been killed in a prison at the edge of Mazar-E-Sharif. The former allies of the Taliban died in a prison uprising, according to the Northern Alliance. [...]

  As the ARD-TV reporter Arnim Stauth reported via satellite telephone, the prisoners detonated hand grenades that they had hidden when surrendering their weapons. They overpowered the guards, took their weapons and fired about themselves. Subsequently there were fights with guards all night long. [...]

  Some of the ARD footage is provided as stills, the .MPG file doesn’t work right now.

Clearly there’s a lot to be sorted out here, and no end of possibilities for ugly explanations and recriminations. Note the headlines: Time avoids the word “bloodbath,” the Guardian prefaces it with “Mass breakout ends in,” the MDR Radio headline just blames the Northern Alliance.

Sweet liberty and other photographs compiled by Shiloh Bucher (see also her text site, dropscan) from Reuters, AP: How glad the people of Afghanistan are to be rid of the Taliban. Save this link for any time someone tries to tell you the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan did no one any good. (Via Matt Welch)

New York Times: Pakistanis Again Said to Evacuate Allies of Taliban

Disgusting. Other reports I’ve read suggest there are some sons of prominent Pakistani religious figures among the Kunduz Krew, and Musharraf is is either scared of them or throwing them a bone to be grateful for. A mistake either way. But wait, it could be even worse:

Some alliance officials accused Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, an alliance commander, of striking a deal with the Pakistani government to evacuate several hundred foreign fighters. Atiqullah Baryalai, the deputy defense minister, was one of a handful of Northern Alliance leaders who asserted today that General Dostum had allowed more than 50 pickup trucks full of foreigners to leave Kunduz and gather at an undisclosed location outside Mazar-i-Sharif. Mr. Baryalai said he suspected that General Dostum may have acted at the request of the Pakistani government.

“Fifty trucks left Kunduz full of foreign Taliban, and they did not come back,” Mr. Baryalai said. “We believe Mr. Dostum is responsible.”

Time to get some Predators and special forces cruising around up there, I think. Find those trucks and foreigners, reroute them to “Paradise.”

New York Times: Foreign Militants in Kunduz Seek Safe Passage to Pakistan

The Pakistanis, who have not officially acknowledged that their citizens are among those trapped in the city, told the American government that no one deserves to be slaughtered and asked that they be protected. [...]

The Pakistani government has made it clear that anyone who is brought onto their soil will be arrested. Fighters from other countries would be sent home.

President Pervez Musharraf said today that the foreign fighters surrender to the United Nations and be treated as prisoners of war. [...]

(emphasis added) You have got to be kidding, Pervez. They do not pass “Go,” they go directly to the U.S.S. Peleliu, if they are to be even that lucky. These weren’t little boys who need a bus ride home to Mama from a bad summer camp. They thought they’d be all jihad, all the time. If the Northern Alliance wants to duck the fight, let them open a corridor south, American aircraft can take it from there. I sure hope Rumsfeld et al have a fallback position here. The U.S. can take prisoners, if need be, by doublecross if need be, but we should definitely not let any of these guys — Pakistani or not — reach Pakistan.

Not that I expected a whole heck of a lot from Musharraf, but it’s beyond me why he is suddenly finding a soft spot in his heart for exactly the grimmest variety of opposition he could imagine. I can only conclude that he is “tacking” back towards the “street” and the Islamists.

Update: David Plotz of Slate weighs in with “Prisoners Dilemma”, in which the legal position of surrendering “unlawful belligerents” (as opposed to regular troops) is examined:

. “Just because they have given up their lawful belligerent status does not mean they have given up all their human rights. They have just given up the special protections accorded to POWs. Once they give up their arms, international law will protect them. They cannot be summarily executed,” says George Washington University law professor Ralph Steinhardt. The consensus of lawyers and scholars seems to be that unlawful belligerents, unlike POWs, can be tried and punished by a victorious power as long as they are treated with basic fairness. The United States will probably conduct a “screening process” to separate the run-of-the-mill Taliban fighters from possible al-Qaida terrorists, says Catholic University law professor Michael Noone. The regular fighters might go free while prisoners identified as potential terrorists would be subject to the military tribunals President George W. Bush established last week. Such tribunals would not violate international conventions if defendants knew the charges against them and defend themselves. Prisoners could be executed after conviction—not summary executions, but certainly morally troublesome ones. [...]

This assumes the United States can get a hold of these guys. I suggest forcing the Northern Alliance to call up Kunduz Talibanistas with an “oh, one more thing” stipulation: all Kunduz forces should be subject to arrest and deportation by U.S. forces. With any “luck,” the surrender is off; otherwise, a somewhat tense handover process begins. How to force that on the Northern Alliance? See below: “no sheltering terrorists” goes for the Northern Alliance, too, and “sheltering terrorists” could be as simple as starting to head south with any of them. Shelter terrorists, expect angry American planes. Mr. Daoud might not even want to risk a brief U.S. attack: it could quickly make hime a quite weaker wolf in the Northern Alliance pack, and the others might finish him off at their leisure. Since the “military tribunals” have been arranged in advance, I can only hope a Kunduz end-game strategy has been prepared as well.