DUSHANBE, June 6 (AVN) - Troops of the anti-Taliban coalition have cut the strategic highway that connects northern and southern districts on Afghanistan, a source for the Afghan embassy in Tajikistan said on Wednesday.
The operation was carried out thanks to capturing the town of Yakaulang in the Bamiyan province, the source told the Military News Agency. Progress was also made in the Gur province in Central Afghanistan, where Ismail Kahn, former governor of the Herat province, managed to unite all anti-Taliban forces. The Taliban military command had to send aircraft to bomb Kanh's positions, but no serious losses were caused on the anti-Taliban forces.
Kahn broke from the top-security prison in the southern Afghan town of Kandahar in May 2000. He met Afghanistan President Burhanuddin Rabbani and Northern Alliance leader Akhmad Shah Massoud on May 22 and then left for the Ghor province to organise a new anti-Taliban front. The Afghan leadership believes that emergence of this front will bring down the pressure on the Northern Alliance forces and tie a part of the Taliban forces in central Afghanistan.
Military experts in Moscow and Dushanbe praise emergence of the new anti-Taliban front and believe that it will help reduce the chances of armed penetration of Islamic extremists in Tajikistan and emergence of a new conflict in Central Asia.