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War's biggest raid over: No one was home
Compiled from Times wires KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- About 200 U.S. Marines returned to their base at Kandahar International Airport on Wednesday after sweeping through a deserted terrorist training camp in southern Afghanistan, but recovering only small amounts of weapons and documents belonging to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The Marines, who had left here 29 hours earlier in a convoy of Humvees and light-armored vehicles, concluded without incident what was the most extensive U.S. ground operation of the war. In the mission that ended around 4 a.m. on Wednesday, the Marines were deployed to a rural area northwest of Kandahar to secure an al-Qaida outpost. The camp -- a compound with 14 buildings -- had been inhabited as recently as a few weeks ago. It was not clear whether Marines were going to find people in the camp, though in the end they found it abandoned. In the same region, the surrender of perhaps 2,000 Taliban soldiers hiding in the mountains near the town of Baghran appeared to be going smoothly. Afghan officials said the holdouts were on track to complete the handover of weapons and vehicles by the end of the week, in keeping with an agreement struck on Sunday. But some Afghan officials said that Taliban leaders, including perhaps Mullah Mohammed Omar, would use the drawn-out surrender to escape from Baghran. Next to Osama bin Laden, the one-eyed Omar is the most wanted man in Afghanistan by U.S. authorities. As leader of the now-deposed Islamic fundamentalist regime, Omar allowed al-Qaida to operate freely in Afghanistan and refused several entreaties to hand over bin Laden to U.S. officials. "They wanted four days to surrender because they want to run away," said Hafiz Ullah, the security chief of Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. "They're going to run away. Maybe we can capture the small commanders, but not the big ones." Meanwhile, a senior Afghan official on Wednesday said that the Taliban's intelligence chief was killed by recent U.S. airstrikes on an eastern Afghanistan village. Qari Ahmadullah would be the highest-ranking official to be killed in the U.S.-led campaign if his death is confirmed. Ahmadullah, who was known to torture prisoners, reportedly was blown from a motorcycle and killed in a pre-dawn air raid Friday on the village of Qalaye Niazi, about three miles north of the city of Gardez in eastern Paktia province. Gen. Niamatullah Jalili, head of the intelligence service of Afghanistan's interior ministry, said Ahmadullah was dead. In Washington, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. officials do not know if Ahmadullah was killed. "Ahmadullah was a key figure of the Taliban in terms of spreading propaganda," Abdullah Jon Tawhedi, deputy minister of Afghanistan's Security Ministry said. "He was good at recruiting people for the Taliban." Afghan intelligence officials say there are as many as 2,500 members of the al-Qaida terror network scattered in Paktia province. The ethnic Pashtun-dominated province borders Pakistan and is just southwest of Tora Bora. Many of the al-Qaida fighters were being smuggled into Pakistan by a network of truck drivers, and possibly headed to join militants in the disputed region of Kashmir, said Tawhedi. Col. John Mulholland, the commander of U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan, said Wednesday that bin Laden could be dead or trapped under rubble in the Tora Bora area, but if he survived the U.S. bombing, he probably has left that region. "I don't think he's up there," Mulholland said. In other developments: The first 200 soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky., arrived in Kandahar to relieve Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, who are flowing back to their ships in the northern Arabian Sea. More than 1,000 soldiers will be based in Kandahar. The total number of U.S. forces now in Afghanistan is about 4,000, the Pentagon said. The Pentagon's chief spokeswoman said Wednesday that reports about military missions in Afghanistan had led to confusion this week, but she denied that the public had been misled or deliberately deceived. News organizations reported Monday that Marines had left their air base near Kandahar aboard helicopters, and interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai said an effort was under way to capture Omar. Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, spokesman for U.S. Central Command in Tampa, told reporters on Monday there was no such mission. Assistant Secretary of Defense Victoria Clarke said, "Over the last few days, there have been a lot of stories about activity in Afghanistan, and I fully admit some of it has been confusing." Clarke also was asked whether a photographer was removed from Kandahar or asked to leave the base by military officials. She replied, "Not that I know of." She said later she was unaware that AP photographer John Moore had been banned from coverage on the base. Moore has covered unrest from Latin America to Africa, including the failed U.S. mission to Somalia. "John Moore appropriately and accurately reported what he saw in Kandahar on Monday," Vincent Alabiso, Associated Press vice president and executive photo editor, said. "He is a skilled photojournalist whose work is valued by the AP."
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From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
