Fall of Mazar-i-Sharif

The Taliban captured Mazar-i-Sharif on 8 August 1998 and controlled it thereafter. After taking the city, Taliban fighters committed a massacre against its Shia population. This led to widespread international condemnation, and further isolation of the Taliban regime. The campaign to capture Mazar-i-Sharif began on October 17, 2001, when the CIA's eight-member Team Alpha landed in the Dari-a-Suf Valley, about 80 miles south of the city, to link up with General Abdul Rashid Dostum. They were joined three days later by Operational Detachment Alpha (ODA) 595 of the 5th Special Forces Group (United States) of the United States Army. One of the CIA officers involved was Johnny Micheal Spann. In the days leading up to the battle, Northern Alliance troops advanced on population centers near the city, such as Shol Ghar, which is 25 kilometers from Mazar-i-Sharif. Phonelines into the city were severed, On November 2, 2001, Green Berets from ODA 543 and three members of the CIA's Team Bravo inserted into the Dari-a-Balkh Valley, after being delayed by weather for several nights. Their role was to support General Mohammed Atta Nur and his militia. Together they fought through the Dari-e-Souf Valley and had linked up with Dostum and his force and ODA 595 and the CIA Team Alpha, who had also battled through the valley. Dostum led the ethnic-Uzbek-dominated faction of the Northern Alliance, the Junbish-i-Milli Islami Afghanistan, in an attack on the village of Keshendeh southwest of the city on November 4, seizing it with his horse-mounted troops. General Noor, meanwhile, led 2,000 men of the ethnic-Tajik-dominated Jamiat-e Islami forces against the village of 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. It was seized two days later. ==Bombing campaign==

to direct aerial bombardments from the ground in 2001 On November 7 and 8, as the Taliban were moving 4,000 fighters across the countryside towards Mazar-i-Sharif in preparation for battle, American B-52 bombers bombed Taliban defenders concentrated in the Cheshmeh-ye Shafa gorge that marked the southern entrance to the city, In 2009, former Taliban commander Maulvi Abdul Akhundzada shared a chilling account of the horrors they witnessed during the bombing: "When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs' concussions. We couldn't bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches." Nevertheless, the Taliban claimed they had infiltrated 500 fighters into the city to prepare for the coming battle. ==Battle==

and U.S. Air Force Combat Controllers in "the first American cavalry charge of the 21st century" with General Dostum and his forces (Taken October 2001) On November 9, 2001, members of the two ODAs and the CIA teams positioned themselves in mountainside hides and began calling in airstrikes against the Taliban at Tangi Pass - the gateway from the Balkh Valley to the city where the US and Northern Alliance agreed to attack. The Taliban responded with indirect fire from BM-21 Grad rockets, which were quickly suppressed by orbiting air support. The airstrikes took their toll on the Taliban and at a signal Atta and Dostum Northern Alliance forces began their assault by foot, horseback, pickup trucks and some captured BMP armored personnel carriers. Initial rumors claimed that the fighters holding the city were unimpressed by the American bombardment and believed that their opponents refused to advance on the city. and seized the city's main military base and the Mazar-e Sharif International Airport. and met only light resistance. After outlying villages fell to precision air strikes on key command and control centers, approximately 5,000-12,000 Taliban combatants as well as members of al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters began to withdraw towards Kunduz to regroup, travelling in pickup trucks, SUVs and flatbed trucks fitted with ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft guns modified for ground combat. Approximately 1,500 Taliban were captured or defected. When these volunteers reached the city in the days when the Taliban were evacuating, many of them were alone and confused. The group, chiefly consisting of teenage boys, At mid-afternoon, U.S. military advisers approved the building for a bombing run. Army Col. Rick Thomas of the U.S. Central Command said they had determined the school was an appropriate target. Officials from the United Nations and other organisations claimed that a massacre by Northern Alliance troops had followed after the defenders surrendered in the school, moments before an American warplane dropped two, or four, 1000-pound bombs. The fighters scattered quickly to escape, and the Northern Alliance shot at 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, ==Aftermath==

The fall of the city proved to be a "major shock", since the United States Central Command had originally believed that the city would remain in Taliban hands well into the following year and that any battle would be "a very slow advance". Mazar-i-Sharif was strategically important. Its capture opened supply routes and provided an airstrip inside the country for American aircraft. The battle was the Taliban's first major defeat and precipitated a rapid transfer of territory in northern Afghanistan. Following rumors that Mullah Dadullah might be headed to recapture the city with as many as 8,000 Taliban fighters, a thousand U.S. Army Rangers were airlifted into the city, which provided the first solid foothold from which Kabul and Kandahar could be reached. US Army Civil Affairs Teams from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion and Tactical Psychological Operations Teams from the 4th Psychological Operations Group assigned to both the Green Berets and Task Force Dagger were immediately deployed to Mazar-e-Sharif to assist in winning the hearts and minds of the inhabitants. The fall of the city generated reports of jubilant excitement among locals, followed by reports of summary executions and the kidnapping of civilians by the Northern Alliance. The Pakistani prisoners 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. including an address from former President Burhanuddin Rabbani. The airfield, the city's main prize for the Americans, had been badly damaged by their bombardment and had been boobytrapped with explosives planted by the Taliban in and around the property as they left. The destroyed runways were patched by Afghans. The first cargo plane landed ten days after the battle. The Turkistan Islamic Party's "Islamic Turkistan" magazine in its 4th edition released an obituary of Bilal all Turkistani who was killed in 1422 Hijri year in Afghanistan during the fall of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate in Mazar e Sharif's Ganja fortress. After the battle, the Northern Alliance advanced towards the city of Kunduz, which was the last remaining Taliban stronghold in northern Afghanistan. The siege lasted two weeks with the city being captured on November 25. Around 8,000 Taliban fighters were captured. They were taken to Mazar-i-Sharif and then to Sheberghan Prison in Jowzjan Province. Between 400 and 3,000 prisoners were reportedly massacred by the Northern Alliance during the journey and buried in mass graves in the Dasht-e Leili desert west of Sheberghan. ==In popular culture==

The fall of Mazar-i-Sharif and the events surrounding it were dramatized in the 2018 film 12 Strong, directed by Nicolai Fuglsig and based on the book Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton. == References ==