ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Islamweb & News Agencies) - The ancient Afghan city of Herat is the next key prize being fought for by the opposition Northern Alliance as they battle, with U.S. backing, to topple the hardline Taliban.
Rebel fighters were locked in fierce battles on the outskirts of the western city of Herat, near the border with Iran, late Sunday.
The capture of that city would open the way for the opposition to try to take southern Kandahar, the power base of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Herat is an oasis town first settled 5,000 years ago and considered to have the most fertile soil in central Asia. The ancient Greek historian Heroditus called it the breadbasket of the region.
The 16th century Moghul Emperor Babar wrote: ``The whole habitable world had not such a town as Herat.''
For centuries it stood at the crossroads of competing Turkic and Persian empires, and it also lay in the path of Genghis Khan, who conquered the city in 1222 and reportedly spared only 40 of its 160,000 inhabitants.
But the city recovered and became the capital of the Timurid when it was moved from Samarkand in 1405.
It became a center for the arts, with its mosques, public baths, libraries and palaces.
``In Herat if you stretch out your feet you are sure to kick a poet,'' said Ali Sher Nawai, a prime minister who was himself a poet and artist.
It is famed for several historical structures but the fabulous blue mosque, or Masjid-i-Jami, standing in the center of the city is the landmark of the dusty town and has survived some of the most furious fighting of the 20th century.
The city was subjected to some of the heaviest bombing of the Soviet occupation shortly after they entered when in 1979 its population rose up in an unprecedented revolt killing Soviet officers, advisers and their families.
Mujahideen commander Ismail Khan, who says his forces are now advancing toward the city, led a coup against the Soviets.
In retaliation, the Soviet Union sent in 300 tanks from Turkmenistan and bombed the historic city indiscriminately.
Large tracts are still in rubble and three years of drought have parched its famed farmland and orchards.
It is known not only for its mosque. Lying in Dasht-e-Mango, or desert of death, Herat sees 120 days of wind from June to September when sand blankets all in its path.