Why Mazar-i-Sharif is so important

Losing Mazar-i-Sharif would be a disaster for the Taliban. Its fall could leave Taliban troops throughout half a dozen provinces in northern Afghanistan largely cut off.

At the crossroads of the northern provinces, Mazar-i-Sharif is the linchpin in the Taliban's grip on northern Afghanistan.

Seizing it would give the opposition and the US-led coalition their first staging ground in the country for the fight to capture Osama bin Laden.

For the United States and the Northern Alliance, Mazar-i-Sharif offers two key prizes: a working airport and a road link to Uzbekistan about 40 miles to the north.

That would enable the United States and its allies to rush in large quantities of ammunition, tanks, artillery and other supplies to bolster the ill-equipped opposition forces.

Uzbekistan supports the US-led campaign against terrorism and has allowed American soldiers to be stationed on its soil.

US officials stressed the land corridor could also be used to transport food and other humanitarian supplies to help Afghans survive the winter.

The city's airport could be refurbished into a base not only for flying in supplies but also for mounting air attacks against Taliban forces elsewhere in the strategic north.

"This would give more facilities to the United States to get rid of terrorists," said Mohammed Karim

Khalili, leader of the Shi'ite Muslim opposition. For the Taliban, losing Mazar-i-Sharif could threaten to isolate thousands of their troops elsewhere in northern and northwestern Afghanistan. "Yes, we are interested in Mazar-i-Sharif," said General Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in the Afghan conflict, told reporters in Washington.

"We're interested in it because it would provide a land bridge, as has been said, up to Uzbekistan, which provides us, among other things, a humanitarian pathway for us to move supplies out of Central Asia and down into Afghanistan." Taliban troops defending the front lines outside Mazar-i-Sharif, a city with an estimated population of about 200,000, have been battered by US warplanes, while opposition soldiers have waged a three-pronged attack from the south.

Most Taliban fighters are Pashtuns, the main ethnic group nationwide but a minority in the north. By contrast, the people of Mazar-i-Sharif are mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks. One of the three columns attacking the city is led by Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek who ruled Mazar-i-Sharif until it fell to the Taliban in 1998.

Reporters have no access to the area and are relying on information from opposition spokesmen contacted by satellite telephones. Normal telephone links to the city have been cut. As a result, it is difficult to determine conditions for civilians in the city, who have been largely cut off from the rest of the country for months.

Mazar-i-Sharif was considered so significant that when the Taliban first captured it in 1997, three countries - Pakistan, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - immediately recognised the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Taliban then lost the city within a week, but recaptured it in 1998 and have hung on to it until now.