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A trip around Kandahar reveals that, for the most part, U.S. bombs hit their marks despite Taliban claims.
©Washington Post
December 12, 2001
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- In the house that Mohammed Omar built, ornate gold-plated chandeliers vied with massive murals of waterfalls and village scenes. Around a corner was a large bouquet of flowers, painted in pastel hues on the wall. And atop the former residence of the Taliban's supreme leader, a team of U.S. Special Forces took positions Tuesday with backpacks, computers and communications gear.
But the former residence of the one-eyed cleric, now a fugitive, told more than just the story of an extremist ruler and his defeat. Decapitated by U.S. bombers, it also provided clues into the war waged against the Taliban here in southeastern Afghanistan by U.S. warplanes and Pashtun militiamen backed by the CIA and U.S. Special Forces.
The campaign in Kandahar was fought mainly from the air, with U.S. warplanes conducting more than two months of strikes against the city and its environs. Despite repeated reports of civilian casualties, a visit to Omar's house and a trip around the city Tuesday indicated that, for the most part, the bombs hit their targets and there were relatively few civilian injuries.
"We did not have many injured here," said Faizal Rabi, a doctor at the Mir Weis Hospital, Kandahar's biggest. "We heard there were some civilians killed. But I don't really know how many."
Five patients were in Rabi's ward Tuesday, he said. None had been injured in the bombing.
Dozens of injured civilians were taken to hospitals in Quetta and other cities in Pakistan, whose border lies 80 miles to the southeast. And in one well-reported incident, American planes are thought to have hit the village of Daman, outside Kandahar, killing 21 members of one family and five from another. Civilian deaths also occurred when U.S. warplanes struck the Kila Jedid ammunition dump and blasted Taliban positions near the airport.
But the long list of civilian fatalities claimed by Taliban officials was nowhere to be seen Tuesday in Kandahar, a city of 200,000 people.
At Omar's palace, a sprawling compound done up in pink and green and located in the northeast corner of Kandahar, bombs cut off the second story and gutted a residence of one of his wives. The courtyard, ringed with enormous murals of tranquil scenes, was intact. Doors between rooms in the palace were blown off their hinges in an apparent security operation against booby traps. Thus assured of their safety, Pashtun tribal leaders nosed through the rubble of Omar's bedroom Tuesday, and Hamid Karzai, the designated leader of Afghanistan's interim government, worked from a guest house in the compound.
Downtown, at another residence of the Taliban chief, the scene was the same. The house was gutted and had collapsed into three giant bomb craters. But the neighbors were unscathed.
"We were scared because of the explosions, but they didn't hit us in the end," said one of the neighbors, Hatikullah, 43, who like many Afghans uses only one name.
Ali Ahmed, a 16-year-old thrill-seeker proficient in English, said that for kicks he would go to every bomb site in the city minutes after the blasts occurred. "They rarely killed normal people," Ali said. "I went to many sites. I never saw a dead normal person. I know they killed some. But really I went to all the sites."
On Srajama Street, U.S. jets flattened three houses in a row. Residents said the houses had been rented by members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The houses are no longer there. But two 15-foot-high burlap tents belonging to the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, which abutted the compound, appeared unharmed.
In another district, U.S. bombs struck a house inhabited by mostly Arab fighters and killed 25 of them, residents said. Houses nearby had windows blown out, but no one but the foreigners was killed, residents said.
"It was one bomb and then another, whooom whooom," said Habibullah, 25, who works for a U.N. agency. "And then we heard this fountain sound. The water main in the house had been cut."
Bombs also destroyed the radio and television building and dozens of other government and military installations. But on the street, Kandahar had a strange feeling of normality.
On the street, shops were full of fruit and vegetables, bright orange carrots, crispy radishes, mushy bananas from Pakistan and sweet yellow apples.
"Business? It's not so good, but it's not so bad either," said Haji Bakhtar, a proprietor of a small stand near the Mir Weis Hospital. "Our best customers used to be the Arabs because they have money. But they left. Now we are waiting for refugees to return home."
The hunt for al-Qaida and the Taliban leadership was evident in many corners of town. Afghan security sources said they think Arabs and other foreigners continue to hide in the city. Karzai said Tuesday he has asked Afghanistan's "common people" to participate in the hunt for "foreign terrorists." Following the request, he said, a Kandahar resident informed on two foreigners living in a nearby house.
"What happened to them?" Karzai was asked.
"I can't go into it," he replied.