AFGHANISTAN's fundamentalist Taliban militia was yesterday being peppered with behind the line attacks, apparently orchestrated by the former government chief, Gen Ahmad Shah. The most dramatic incident was the shelling of Kabul's main military air base at Bagram, 50 km north of the capital the Taliban swept into just two weeks ago.
Witnesses said at least six shells landed inside the base perimeter during an hour long attack, but it was not known whether there was any damage to the small number of Soviet era MiG-23s the Taliban say they have there.
The Taliban sent up two helicopter gunships to fire rockets at the area from which the shells were being fired. The gunships came under anti aircraft fire but escaped unharmed. The extent of any damage to Gen Masood's forces was not known.
There were two other attacks on Taliban fighters just north of Kabul which local people said followed visits by Gen Masood's envoys urging groups to turn against the militia which drove him back to his Panjsher Valley stronghold.
Observers in Kabul said Gen Masood appeared to have reverted to the tactics he used against the Soviet army in the 1980s when Moscow backed a communist Afghan government.
His ethnic Tajiks survived a series of assaults on the Panjsher in that decade and often struck back in the Salang Pass which winds through the Hindu Kush mountains that divide north and south. Then they would stage hit and run raids in the Soviet rear.
The largely ethnic Pushtun Taliban launched an assault on the gorge that leads into the Panjsher last Saturday. After four days of fighting they had penetrated barely 500 metres.
An attack on Tuesday forced the Taliban to break off their attack on the Panjsher and switch men to a new front as well as to call up heavy reinforcements from Kabul.
Travellers said that on Thursday Gen Masood's men struck just behind the Taliban frontline headquarters town of Jabal os Siraj at the mouth of the Salang.
They also staged two ambushes between Bagram and Charikar, a mainly Tajik town 30 minutes' drive south of Jabal os Siraj, and hit at the Taliban occupied governor's house just outside Charikar.