BRIEF

Qala-i Jangi Comes to an End

General Dostum, who had been in Konduz during the entire uprising arrived back in Mazar-e Sharif in the early morning hours Wednesday.  He met hundreds of journalists who descended on the fortress for the first time.  Hundreds of bodies lie strewn about the fortress: Taliban, Northern Alliance, and one American. 

The next day, Thursday, Northern Alliance troops discover Taliban still holed up in the cell structure below the pink house.  Eventually, on Saturday, over eighty Taliban emerge from below into the courtyard.  There are two U.S. citizens among them.

The Qala-i Jangi uprising will be considered one of the most brutal moments of the war, in part, due to the graphic media coverage.  There will also continue to be a number of troubling questions regarding the uprising.  Was it preventable and was it necessary for so many to die in the outcome?

While it has been alleged that the battle was a deliberate massacre of the type that has plagued Afghanistan for decades, the debacle was more a result of a series of mistakes.  First, the Taliban prisoners were never adequately searched.  At least one killed himself and a Northern Alliance commander by grenade in the desert meeting place northeast of Mazar-e Sharif before being taken to Qala-i Jangi Fortress on Saturday night.  That attack should have prompted a thorough search, but none was made then, or after the prisoners’ arrival at the fort.

Second, when the revolt began the Northern Alliance was severely undermanned, outnumbered by at least 4 to 1 by all accounts.  Furthermore, the fortress, except for the cell structure below the pink house, was never designed as a prison.  The Taliban were housed less than 20 meters from stockpiled weapons—although they were probably unaware of this upon entering the fortress.

Third, it seems the prisoners were given no adequate guarantees for their safety, and being foreigners, may have felt they would surely be killed and therefore have nothing to lose.  Taliban who survived the uprising claim that some in the group cried as they were being led into the courtyard Sunday morning—sure they were going to be killed.  Once the uprising began Northern Alliance soldiers on the scene seemed to indicate that now, since the Taliban had instigated the insurrection, they would finish it—there would be no more attempts to get the remaining Taliban to surrender.

This reaction to the uprising fits with what General Dostum’s men had to say about the Girl’s School massacre in Mazar e Sharif less than two weeks prior to the uprising.  In that event, members of Dostum’s forces claim that negotiators were sent into the school to discuss the terms of the surrender but were killed by the Pakistanis during the negotiation process.  At which point General Dostum’s forces and US air strikes attacked the school relentlessly until all the 600 Pakistanis inside were all killed.
 
Finally, the CIA operatives in the fortress on Sunday did not have adequate back up once the uprising began—no quick reaction force outside the fortress walls.  Plus, they were without vital communications equipment and were forced to rely on a journalist’s satellite phone to bring in the Special Forces.  There were also rumors during the battle that the initial cause of the uprising may have been aggressive reporting.  However, since the journalists within the fortress on Sunday morning were not present in the southern courtyard when the shooting began, there has been speculation that the reference points to the CIA operatives conducting their interrogations with the prisoners.
  
Serious questions also remain regarding the number of prisoners involved.  If, as General Dostum’s Political Officer, Olim Razum, claims, up to five hundred Taliban were in the fortress at the insurrection’s beginning, then a significant number remain unaccounted for.  Pakistani’s have surfaced in Pakistan after the incident claiming to have been part of the group taken to the fortress.  They claim that they escaped during the night and eventually made their way out of Afghanistan.  Additionally, Taliban were lynched blocks from Qala-i Jangi by local residents and at least three were found dead outside the fortress walls near an open drain pipe.

The battle of Qala-i Jangi may be remembered as the result of a series of grave errors that led to the following bloodbath.

Additional Afghanistan Material by CFR:

For an inside look at reporting the uprising at Qala Jangi see CFR’s feature length documentary Fog and Friction. CFR Director Dodge Billingsley and TIME Magazine’s Alex Perry were there as the battle unfolded, trying to make sense of this watershed event in the war for Afghanistan.

Qala-i Jangi Satellite Imagery

Spann Interrogates John Walker at Qala-i Jangi Transcript

Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan