Kandahar

WASHINGTON - Aided by American air power and ground troops, opposition forces in southern Afghanistan have encircled and are on the verge of laying siege to the city of Kandahar, the last major bastion of Taliban military power, senior U.S. military officials said yesterday. As American warplanes continued to bomb Taliban positions in and around Kandahar, opposition militias cut off the main roads leading into the city from the north, west and east. Eighty miles to the southwest, 1,000 U.S. Marines have established a base that is within quick striking distance by helicopter.

The highest compliment I can pay to the Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf's Kandahar is that it recalls the great Indian director Satyajit Ray's 1975 movie Distant Thunder. Both mourn social catastrophes: Ray the famine and epidemics ravaging Bengal during World War II; Makhmalbaf, the rule of the Taliban in Afghanistan. And both focus their outrage on the enforced subordination of women to men. Among the key images in each film are women moving through blighted landscapes like mythic entities.

WASHINGTON - The last entrenched force of Taliban fighters, in the southern Afghanistan stronghold of Kandahar, is proving particularly difficult to defeat, preventing the advance of U.S. Marines, defense officials said yesterday. The Taliban forces, some armed with shoulder-fired missiles, are a threat to U.S. aircraft, which are being used to assist Afghan tribes attempting to capture the city, they said. The tribal forces lack sufficient numbers to defeat the dug-in Taliban fighters, thought to number between 3,000 and 17,000.

- The current offensive in Marjah is a critical stepping stone for what is likely the most important fight of the Afghan surge in the coming months: securing Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban and the most important city in southern Afghanistan, according to defense officials and analysts. The military is using the Marjah offensive to destroy an important Taliban haven, but also to test a strategy that emphasizes strong partnership with Afghan security forces and security for Afghan civilians.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that a Special Forces raid on two compounds north of Kandahar last month killed 15 Afghans loyal to a provincial governor, rather than the Taliban or al-Qaida forces the U.S. believed were located there. But Rumsfeld denied the raid was a mistake, saying that U.S. troops traveled to the area to verify intelligence reports of enemy activity. The Americans were fired upon by those inside one of the compounds, located in a remote stretch of Uruzgan province, and returned fire, he said.

WITH THE MARINES IN AFGHANISTAN - On a sand ridge overlooking an ochre-colored stretch of dunes, Lt. Tim Lynch waits for darkness and waits for any sign of the Taliban. Lynch is the commander of the second platoon of Charlie Company. His men are arrayed in what the Marines call fighting holes, about a mile from the main base. They are preparing to hunker down for a long night in the cold, lining up water bottles, unfurling rubber pads for warmth, preparing to deal with any shadowy enemy fighters who might dare emerge from the forbidding high desert.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Two months after the American bombardment of Afghanistan began, Taliban forces abandoned their last stronghold in Kandahar yesterday. The surrender, reported by anti-Taliban leaders entering the city, appeared to complete the collapse of the radical Islamic group that ruled Afghanistan. But confusion was widespread in the streets of Kandahar, with rival warlords competing for control, some Taliban fighters defiant, and the fate of the Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, unclear.

QUETTA, Pakistan - The first bombs dropped by U.S.-led forces on military targets in Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban regime in southern Afghanistan, shook the ground like an earthquake and sent families fleeing in terror. In their panic, they paid huge sums for rides away from the bombing, selling goats, sheep, cows and clothing to raise money for the trip. "All the women and children were yelling and shouting, and telling everyone to get out of their homes," said a relief worker who witnessed the bombing but was too frightened of the Taliban to give his name.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Explosions echoed through vineyards and pomegranate groves yesterday as Afghan and NATO forces backed by helicopter gunships recaptured at least four villages in southern Afghanistan that had been seized by the Taliban, Afghan authorities said. At least three dozen insurgents, including a commander, and two Afghan soldiers were killed in the Arghandab district northwest of Kandahar, Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said. By day's end, the insurgents were still in control of a half-dozen villages.