New regime gives women more freedom

The inhabitants of Mazar-i-Sharif, the main city in northern Afghanistan, were celebrating their first day of liberation from the Taliban yesterday as the Northern Alliance vowed drastic changes in the way they run the territories they have seized.

Women will no longer have to be veiled, said a leading official of the Northern Alliance, which won a key victory when it drove the Taliban out of Mazar on Friday. Mohammed Hasham Saad, the top Alliance official in Uzbekistan, said the university would be re-opened to men and women, and foreign doctors would be invited to the city. "It doesn't matter if it is a man or a woman," Mr Saad said. "We are different from the Taliban."

Under the regime's fundamentalist rule, women were forced to wear the head-to-toe burqa and banned from working, while schools for girls were closed. Another spokes- man said UN and non-governmental aid agencies were welcome to return to areas under Northern Alliance control "whenever they want".

After the Taliban fled, people gathered to sacrifice sheep and pray in Mazar's famous blue-tiled mosque. "The general mood is very good," said Mr Saad. The city was largely untouched by the fighting, and there had been little damage to buildings. The Alliance's first priority would be to restore electricity and gas supplies.

Yesterday Alliance forces were driving from Mazar towards the border of nearby Uzbekistan, aiming for the Soviet-built Friendship Bridge across the Amu Darya river, which forms the border. With the route to the Uzbekistan city of Termez open, military supplies and desperately needed aid to feed the starving civilian population of northern Afghanistan can flood in.

As Taliban forces flee south towards Kabul, the Alliance is seeking to join up the patches of territory it holds across the north. Its forces in the north-east are advancing on the towns of Taloqan and Kunduz, aiming to make contact with the fighters who captured Mazar. But while some commanders are confident that Taloqan will fall "very soon", they warn privately that Kunduz, which has an easily defensible position, will be harder to crack. For all the the Afghan opposition's certainty of an easy victory, the Taliban were still firing back yesterday, despite constant pounding by Alliance artillery and American warplanes.

But the momentum is with the Alliance, and Taliban fighters are seeking to escape a closing trap. To reach Kabul, they will have to negotiate a perilous route through the Hindu Kush which takes them through hostile territory. A UN source said yesterday that the next battle could take place in the region of Bamian, where the Taliban blew up world-famous statues of Buddha.

"Local forces have already pulled out of Bamian, leaving about 1,500 Pashtuns and their Arab allies," said the source. "Commanders there are promising both sides that they are with them, but they are waiting to see which way things go."