AFGHANISTAN'S Taliban movement tightened its grip on the north of the country and won vital diplomatic recognition from Pakistan yesterday as the former opposition warlord, Gen Abdul Rashid Dosturn, fled to Turkey.
The Taliban government appealed for world recognition after its sweeping weekend victories secured control over most of Afghanistan. Pakistan, which has always denied furnishing support to the Taliban, responded immediately.
But a key neighbour Iran said it was not yet ready to recognise the Taliban. President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani said his country would wait until the Kabul government was recognised by the United Nations.
Russia and its Central Asian allies, alarmed at the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, expressed concern and tightened border security against a possible flood of refugees.
Gen Abdul Malik, whose switch of sides last Monday to the Taliban triggered Gen Dostum's collapse, promised a strict Islamic regime in the areas under his control.
Gen Dostum arrived in Ankara yesterday. Turkey was widely reported to have supported the ethnic Uzbek leader. Turks and Uzbeks share common ethnic and linguistic links.
"There will be Islamic Shariah (law) in the north," Gen Malik told a news conference in Mazar i Sharif, one day after his troops swept into the northern capital. "I am a son of Islam, my ancestors were Muslims and I was not educated at Moscow as Dostum was.
Gen Malik, who was Gen Dostum's deputy until he staged his revolt last Monday in favour of the Taliban movement, said an Islamic Afghanistan would not threaten Russia or Central Asian republics on its northern frontier.
The former Soviet republics of Central Asia, alarmed by the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, hastily stepped up their border security after the Taliban's advances.
A representative of the Russian border guards in Tajikistan said there had been an increased influx of refugees from Afghanistan into Tajikistan.
Tajik President Imomali Rakhmonov held talks with his security advisers late on Saturday on the Afghan crisis.
Less than two weeks ago the Taliban government protested at being left out of a summit meeting of the 10 nation Economic Cooperation Organisation in Doshanbe, capital of Tajikistan, which was attended by the ousted president Burhanuddin Rabbani.
In Moscow, the Russian Foreign Minister Mr Yevgeny Primakov warned the Taliban not to violate the borders of the Commonwealth of Independent States, successor to the Sovet Union.
Mazar i Sharif, the last major city to hold out against the Taliban, appeared yesterday to be under the full control of ethnic Uzbek fighters, who had until last week been part of an alliance opposing the purist Islamic movement.
Taliban official Mullah Wakhil Ahmed Motawakhil said in Kabul the towns of Kunduz and Baghlan east of Mazar came under Taliban control when fighters from one faction in the alliance switched sides.
"Former Hezb i Islami fighters in Kunduz and Baghlan have joined the Taliban and the towns are now under their control."
The Pakistan based Afghan news service said the provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan and nearby Samangan province, including its capital Aibak, fell to the Taliban yesterday.
The Taliban advance ends an eight month deadlock between the purist Islamic movement and a fragile coalition linking Gen Dostum with former government forces of Burhanuddin Rabbani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb i Islami and the mainly ShiaHezb i Wahdat.
The Taliban sweep has left the alliance in tatters and stranded from supply lines in the Hindu Kush mountains.
A Shia Muslim militia was still offering resistance in the central city of Bamiyan, while former government military commander Ahmed Shah Masood holds part of the north east.