Camp offers window into al-Qaida training

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Down a dirt road, within easy access of the Kandahar airport by a back route, formidably defended with tanks, antiaircraft weapons and mines, stood Osama bin Laden's lair.

The camp, called the Lewa Saradi, or Wolf's Frontier, functioned as one of the main training facilities in Afghanistan for bin Laden's al-Qaida network, according to Afghan security officials. Built like a warlord's fort, encased in high khaki mud walls, as long as at least five football fields and almost as wide, it seemed designed to impress recruits to the holy war.

On one side of the vast center were the training areas: obstacle courses with jungle gyms, a target range with National Rifle Association targets and ammunition dumps that still contain plastic explosives, a hand-held bomb and touches of Americana like a Los Angeles Raiders cap. On the other, 70 low-slung houses were laid out in neat rows with wide streets.

Here terrorism mixed with pastoral tranquility -- a wheat field, children's bicycles, swings, a small shop with women's sanitary napkins and powdered milk, and behind one brick structure a huge cache of unprocessed lapis lazuli. Near the entrance to one house, the body of a battery-powered doll lay in the dirt, its head a few inches away.

As the search intensifies for bin Laden, other members of his al-Qaida network and senior officials from the Taliban government, including Mohammad Omar, its fugitive leader, a look around Wolf's Frontier provided a window on the al-Qaida network and its members' lives in Afghanistan.

"This was a closed community," said Abibullah Barakzai, a Pashtun fighter who lived near the camp during the days of the Taliban and was standing guard over it Wednesday. "Few Afghans could go in. Everything about it was secret. We saw dust and heard firing. It was a secret place."

In effect, al-Qaida constructed a private community for the expatriate radicals who came to pursue holy war with their families in tow. Its library contained periodicals copied from places as far away as the Kansas City Public Library.

The Wolf's Frontier was famous among al-Qaida operatives and their enemies alike. American commandos, who call it Tornak Farms, were assiduous Wednesday in pointing out which places appeared in al-Qaida's promotional videos. It was here that al-Qaida made its videos of men in balaclavas bursting into houses, jumping into and out of sewer pipes. And it was here that bin Laden had the video made of himself firing a Kalashnikov assault rifle, a promo for his holy war.

The camp was one of the last places to fall in Kandahar, the southeastern Afghanistan city Taliban militia fled early Friday after vowing to hold out until the bitter end. Fighting continued here, near the airport about 12 miles south of the city, until Sunday, according to Bacha Khan, a brother of Gul Agha Shirzai, the Pashtun commander who has resumed his earlier role as governor of Kandahar.

Khan said his fighters discovered the camp after they took the airport and began pushing on. Foreign fighters shot at his men and they returned fire. Khan said 40 foreign militiamen were killed in the shootout.

But the U.S. military had discovered the camp earlier and laid it to waste from the air. On Wednesday, it looked like a cyclone had descended on it. Every house was destroyed. A three-story building, called the administrative headquarters of the al-Qaida network, was just a frame, its insides torn out by an American bomb. Craters dotted the compound.

The house where bin Laden lived was turned into a pile of bricks. Silver trays for tea and cooking utensils were mixed in among the rubble. Bin Laden's bunker was bombed as well.

Down the street, papers from the obliterated library lined several craters. The filing system was rigorous. Documents -- an analysis of the Mexican oil industry, copies of treaties between the United States and Saudi Arabia and periodicals such as Chemical Weekly from the Kansas City Public Library and State Department bulletins -- were cataloged and marked.

Each house was equipped with a bunker but many had been exposed by the bombs. In one bunker near the middle of the residential area, another ammunition dump yielded boxes of plastic explosives, bandoleers of heavy machine-gun rounds and a few small bombs encased in boxes from Pakistani companies.

"Before the Taliban came this was a farm," said Mohammed Abbas, another Afghan fighter as he sat fingering wheat seeds that had spilled from a bag from Des Moines, Iowa.

"Then the Taliban came and the Arabs moved in. In the beginning they were nice to us, good Muslims. Then the war started and they changed. They became tough with us. And then they got bombed."

The search for foreigners continued around Kandahar. Fighters working for Gul Agha combed an apartment complex Tuesday morning and killed six foreign men in a shootout, security officials said. Local residents had tipped them off, they said. Fake Saudi drivers' licenses and a stack of photographs were found there.

The officials said they think still more Arabs and other foreigners are hiding in and around Kandahar. "They have nowhere to run," said Yusuf Pushtun, an aide to Gul Agha.

Hamid Karzai, who has been named to lead the interim Afghan government that will take office on Dec. 22, said he is obsessed with finding Omar, who sheltered bin Laden and al-Qaida for years. "This man ruined Afghanistan," he said. "Of course I am obsessed."

Afghan fighters said they are looking for foreigners and vowed to carry out rough justice. Despite an apparent U.S. plan to interrogate members of the al-Qaida network, many Afghan gunmen said they would rather kill the foreigners. The U.S. Marine camp 55 miles south of Kandahar has been set up to process al-Qaida prisoners. So far it has only one inmate, the American John Walker.

"Capture these guys?" scoffed Mohammed Hajeri, a fighter for Gul Agha who was on patrol in the city Wednesday.

"No, I want to kill them. My commander says that's okay. If you capture these guys they usually have grenades and will blow you up and die with you. That's not a very good idea."

Three bearded American commandos, with M-16s, designer sunglasses, baseball caps and turbans, were at the compound Wednesday, making sure local Afghans and eager journalists didn't walk away with documents.

The commandos said that other services might want to comb through the camp.

On Wednesday morning, a mine blew the head off a horse searching for a few tufts of grass near the obstacle course. An Afghan man, leading a group of French television reporters through the area, then lost half of his right leg to a mine or unexploded ordnance.

Most of the camp had not yet been swept for mines, the commandos said.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright