After outlying villages fell, and an intensive aerial bombardment around the city, the Taliban withdrew from the city. As the city fell to the Northern Alliance, several hundred Taliban fighters were killed, and approximately 500 were captured or defected to the U.S. backed opposition.
Some media sources outside the United States were hesitant to label the fall of the city a military "victory", claiming there had been no clear battle, and the Taliban had largely withdrawn to other cities in advance of the invading force.
Mazar-i-Sharif had significant strategic importance, as its capture opened supply routes and provided an airstrip inside the country for American aircraft.It was considered the first major defeat for the Taliban, and to have precipitated a rapid loss of territory in Northern Afghanistan.
Leadup
Photo showing "the first American cavalry charge of the 21st century"
with General Dostum and his Northern Alliance forces.
The decision to launch the first major strike of the war against Mazar-i-Sharif came following a meeting between U.S. Army General Tommy Franks with Northern Alliance commander Mohammed Fahim in Tajikstan on October 30.
In the days leading up to the battle, Northern Alliance troops advanced on population centers near the city such as Shol Ghar, 25 kilometers from Mazar-i-Sharif. In addition, phonelines into the city were severed, and American officials began reporting tales of anti-Taliban forces charging Afghan tanks on horseback.Propaganda leaflets were dropped from airplanes, showing a woman being struck by a man and asking if this was how the Afghans wanted to live, and listing the radio frequencies over which Americans would be broadcasting their own version of events.Meanwhile, American Special Forces were setting up Laser designators to serve as a beacon for guided munitions highlighting targets around the city.
General Dostum led the Uzbek faction in an attack on the village of Keshendeh south-west of the city on November 4, seizing it with his horse-mounted troops.General Noor, meanwhile, led 2000 Tajik forces against Ag Kupruk directly south of the city, along with six Special Forces soldiers, and seven others who directed bombing from behind Taliban lines north of the city, and it was seized two days later.
On November 7, New York University Director of Studies on International Cooperation Barnett Rubin appeared before the American Committee on International Relations hearing on The Future of Afghanistan, and warned that with Mazar-i-Sharif clearly on the brink of invasion, there was a responsibility to ensure that there were no reprisal killings of Taliban members by the Northern Alliance; noting that the last two times the city had been overrun, thousands had been killed.
Bombing campaign
A Special Forces officer directs aerial bombardments from the ground in 2001
As Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami began moving 4,000 fighters across the countryside towards Mazar-i-Sharif in preparation for battle, American forces launched a bombing campaign through November 7–8, as B-52 bombers bombed Taliban defenders concentrated in the Chesmay-e-Safa gorge that marked the southern entrance to the city,as well as the Haji Gak pass which was the only Taliban-controlled entrance to the city. Nevertheless, the Taliban stated they were still able to bring 500 fighters into the city to prepare for the coming battle. Taliban forces fired anti-aircraft guns at the planes, but none were shot down.
It was one of the heaviest bombings of the war to that point.
Battle
American Special Forces on November 10, after arriving in the city with Northern Alliance fighters
File:Rawa photo of dead Taliban in Sultan Razia school.PNG
Two dead Taliban fighters inside the Sultan Razia schoolyard
Damage to the Sultan Razia Girls' School
There were initially rumors that the Afghan fighters were unimpressed by the American bombardment and refused to advance on the city, but at 2 p.m., Northern Alliance forces, under the command of generals Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ustad Atta Mohammed Noor, swept across the Pul-i-Imam Bukhri bridge,and seized the city's main military base and airport. They had originally been holding a position 22 kilometres outside the city.
The "ragtag" non-uniformed Northern Alliance forces entered the city from the Balk Valley on "begged, borrowed and confiscated transportation," and met only light resistance.[
After outlying villages fell from precision air strikes on key command and control centers, approximately 5,000-12,000 Taliban and foreign fighters - including Chechen, Pakistan, Arabs, Uzbeks and Chinese Uyghurs, began their withdrawal from the city towards Kunduz, in pickup trucks, SUVs and flat bed trucks fitted with ZSU 23-2's (anti-aircraft guns modified for ground combat), to regroup. By sunset, the Taliban forces had retreated to the north and east, while there were fears that they were massing for a counter-offensive. It was later estimated that 400-600 people had died in the battle, although it was not possible to separate the numbers of civilians from combatants.
Tomat (second from left) receives the Silver Star citation.
By sunset, the vast majority of the Taliban forces had retreated to the north and east, in an attempt to mass for a counter-offensive. It was later estimated that 400-600 people had died in the battle. Approximately 1,500 Taliban were captured or defected to the U.S. backed opposition.
Upholding the claim by Taliban officials that they would be able to move 500 fresh fighters into the city, as many as 900 Pakistani fighters reached Mazar-i-sharif in the following days as the majority of the Taliban were evacuating. It was determined later that many of these young fighters were recruited by a Pakistani Mullah, Sufi Mohammed, who used a loudspeaker riveted onto pickup trucks which blared "Those who die fighting for God don't die! Those who go on jihad live forever, in paradise!"
When these volunteers reached the city in the days as the Taliban were evacuating, many of them were alone and confused. The group, chiefly consisting of underage boys, gathered in the Sultan Razia Girls' School, where they began negotiating their surrender, but hundreds of them were ultimately killed.
For almost two days as the group gathered in the abandoned Sultan Razia Girls' School building up their fighting positions, the town officials and Northern Alliance attempted negotiations for their surrender, but the fighters vehemently refused, ultimately killing two peace envoys, one town mullah and a soldier escort. All the while they constantly fired at anyone that moved within the vicinity of the building, including civilian bystanders. After the murders of the envoys, the Northern Alliance began returning fire on the school with machine guns with little effect. This gun battle went on for hours. Inside the battered school, someone scrawled on the walls the words of their mullah: "Die for Pakistan" and "Never Surrender." At mid-afternoon, U.S. military advisers approved the building for a bombing run. "We had determined the school was an appropriate target," said Army Col. Rick Thomas of the U.S. Central Command. "Our philosophy has been surrender or die."
Officials from the United Nations and other organisations suggested that it may have been a massacre by Northern Alliance troops after they surrendered in the school moments before an American warplane dropped two, or four, 1000-pound bombs, resulting in the Taliban members scattering quickly to escape, and the Northern Alliance shooting them as they fled, resulting in an alleged 800 fatalities. Later reports suggested instead that the Northern Alliance had shelled the school, rather than an American warplane dropping bombs on it, but following the battle, United States Air Force Sgt. Stephen E. Tomat was awarded the Silver Star for calling in the air strike on six vehicles and a school.
Aftermath
Students at the 2002 reopening of the Sultan Razia school after its destruction.
The Airfield was rehabilitated and operational by December 2001.
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 by the Taliban as they left, with explosives planted 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-i-Sharif, the former Taliban Voice of Sharia channel on 1584 kHz,[45] 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-i-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-i-Sharif on Friday [November 9] 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."
Source:Wikipedia
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