December 3, 2001	Monday	Ramazan 17, 1422

WASHINGTON, Dec 2: A white, US-born Taliban fighter was among the few Northern Alliance prisoners to survive the bloody uprising at the Qala-e-Jangi prison fortress, outside Mazar-i-Sharif, Newsweek magazine reports in their December 3 edition.

A Newsweek reporter who briefly interviewed the fighter wrote that he was “not a naturalized citizen or disaffected Arab-American,” but rather “a white, educated-sounding, apparently middle-class American.”

The magazine identified him as Abdul Hamid, age 20, and described him as “well-spoken, with a mid-Atlantic accent.”

Hamid declined to give the magazine his birth name or many other details about his life, but did reveal that he was born in the Washington, DC area and said he grew up in a different, unspecified locale in the United States.

Hamid told the magazine that he converted to Islam at age 16, and later went to Pakistan to study the Koran, where he came in contact with “some of the original teachers of the leaders of the Taliban movement.”

Hamid said he moved to Afghanistan six months ago to help the Taliban build a “true Islamic state.”

Hamid was one of only 86 Taliban fighters to survive the bloody four-day uprising by hundreds of Taliban prisoners at west of Mazar-i-Sharif.

US warplanes bombed the fortress in waves, and US and British special forces were seen fighting alongside Alliance soldiers to put down the revolt, which began November 25 when prisoners seized their captors’ weapons.

Northern Alliance commanders said that around 450 Taliban soldiers died in fighting.—AFP