November 6, 2001	Tuesday	Shaba’an 19, 1422

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JABAL SERAJ, Nov 5: The military chief of the Northern Alliance, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, said on Monday his forces were ready to march on Kabul, despite signs the anti-Taliban army were far from prepared.

“We are ready, but it all depends on our strategy and the circumstances,” Fahim, successor to slain topgun Ahmad Shah Masood, said while talking to reporters attending a military parade and exercises at this Northern Alliance base.

The manoeuvres included an inspection of some 2,000 regular troops, freshly clothed in new uniforms, and 17 tanks and 20 armoured personnel carriers.

The three days of exercises are aimed at turning round an army that has suffered five years of setbacks, and shifting the emphasis of training from defensive to offensive now that the Taliban are under United States attack.

“These military exercises show we have reached the highest level of preparedness,” Fahim explained, as tanks began a round of target practice on a hill overlooking the divided Shomali valley.

Fahim, however, did not address the troops and only made a brief inspection of a line of soldiers.

Aiming at a hillside bunker some 500 metres away, which one commander described as a mock hideout of Osama bin Laden, just a few of the shells shot during the 10-minute volley of tank fire actually hit the target.

Ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani, ousted from Kabul by the Taliban in 1996, told the soldiers to follow the example of Masood.

“Do not forget his resistance,” Rabbani, who is still the head of Afghanistan’s United Nations-recognized government, told the lines of fighters up on a dusty hillside near this Northern Alliance base.

He also insisted that it was up to opposition fighters, and not foreign troops, to oust the Taliban from power.—AFP