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The Taleban regime has started mobilising able-bodied Afghan men en masse in the face of an imminent US attack and the stepped up Northern Alliance offensive, say Russian media reports.
According to the online edition of Gazeta Ru, the Taleban regime has called for total mobilisation of the male population in the territory it controls.
The Taleban militia, which has an armed force of about 100,000 men at the moment, reportedly aims to increase its strength to 300,000.
The Taleban forces have reportedly been deployed on three fronts, with the bulk waiting to face an expected US attack along the Pakistan border. The rest are fighting heavy battles against the Northern Alliance and forces led by General Rashid Dostum, who returned to the battlefield recently after a long silence.
The Northern Alliance, which controlled only about five per cent of Afghan territory till recently, is reported to be making a spectacular advance towards the centre of the country.
Russian media reports suggest that the Northern Alliance has captured more than one-fourth of Afghan territory in the last couple of days. The opposition coalition's forces are said to have captured some strategically important regions that are 120-130 km deep into Taleban-held territory.
The Northern Alliance's success is being attributed to massive Russian and Iranian support and is intended to demoralise the Taleban before the US retaliatory strike begins.
The US is preparing to attack the Taleban as it has sheltered Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi extremist Washington blames for the terror attack on American soil on September 11.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on his return on Monday from a Black Sea coast health resort where he had intensive consultations with top ministers and military commanders, publicly declared for the first time that Moscow would extend all military and financial assistance to the Northern Alliance to defeat the Taleban.
He also said he had the full backing of the Central Asian republics in the campaign.
The Northern Alliance has expressed interest in receiving military and other assistance from the US but has cautioned that Afghanistan's independence cannot be in question under any circumstance.
Putin has set up a committee under the chairmanship of Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov to study the situation in Afghanistan and make suggestions to meet any eventuality. The then Soviet Union lost tens of thousands of soldiers in its disastrous nine-year campaign in Afghanistan.
Ivanov, while saying that Moscow is ready to cooperate with the US in combating terrorism, once again ruled out Russian participation in any military operation under American leadership.
Putin has made it clear that Russian participation in any military action can be possible only with the UN or its Security Council's approval.
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