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U.S. Campaign Shifts to Destruction of Al-Qaeda, Bin Laden
WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (News Agencies) - U.S. forces targeted Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders, killing some with air strikes, as the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan shifted to the destruction of the network and its leader Osama bin laden, U.S. military leaders said Thursday.
"We are tightening the noose," said Army General Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S. campaign in the central Asian nation. "It is a matter of time."
The Pentagon revealed that gatherings of senior Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders were struck Tuesday in a building near the capital Kabul and again on Wednesday in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar. Some were believed to have been killed, said Victoria Clarke, the Pentagon's chief spokeswoman.
But so far bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, have eluded a U.S. dragnet that includes special forces on the ground and an array of high-tech surveillance "eyes in the sky," officials said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld raised the possibility that the Saudi multi-millionaire, the chief suspect in the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, may have slipped out of the country in a low-flying Taliban helicopter.
"You've got porous borders in a number of directions, you've got deep ravines, and to the extent that they may or may not have any helicopters left - we think they may - it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they could tear down one of the valleys and not be detected," he said
"It's not a bottle you can cork. It's a large country with a lot of borders," he said.
The U.S. defense secretary said he thought bin Laden would be found "either there or in another country."
"But it seems to me that we have to be quite realistic about the task, and the task is, as the general said, to go get the senior leadership of both Taliban and al-Qaeda," Rumsfeld said.
Franks was in Washington to brief the chiefs of staff and the president's top national security team on where the campaign will go now that the Taliban has suffered stunning defeats, relinquishing control of the north and fighting for survival in the south.
He told reporters at a press conference with Rumsfeld that the campaign so far has set the conditions for destroying al-Qaeda by first taking out Taliban air defenses and then using special forces and air strikes to take apart the Taliban itself.
"We did that," Franks added.
Both he and Rumsfeld refrained from pronouncing the Taliban defeated, however, noting continued fighting in Kandahar and in the northern town of Kunduz, where some 2,000 to 3,000 al-Qaeda fighters were holding off ground attacks and U.S. air strikes.
"But what is important to us is the destruction of the al-Qaeda network, a terrorist network with global reach," Franks said. "So we remain fixed on that mission, as well as on the Taliban that provides safe harbor for that."
Rumsfeld said the United States might send in more ground troops to secure and repair airfields to be used to go after al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, and possibly expand humanitarian operations.
U.S. special forces, meanwhile, have begun searching sites where weapons of mass destruction may have been produced as they fall from Taliban control, but have found nothing substantial yet, said Franks.
Rumsfeld said they were checking a Times of London report about a trove of partly burned documents with designs for missiles, bombs and nuclear weapons at an abandoned safe house in Kabul.
The United States has at least several dozen special forces troops on the ground in the south, putting up roadblocks in the vicinity of Kandahar to try to catch Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders, Pentagon officials said.
The special forces were said to be operating independently in the south, but Franks acknowledged for the first time that they were now working with Pashtun tribes there in much the same way as they did with opposition forces in the North.
"They are providing initial contact. They provide advice. They facilitate re-supply activities. And they also assist in calling in close air support," he said.
Pashtun tribes served as a key base of support for the Taliban during their five-year rule, but with the militia's dramatic reversals in the north, the tribes are now staging revolts in key southern areas.
"We're in consultation with a number [of tribes] and we're looking to have them with others," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "They are frankly coming out of the woodworks rather quickly."
"It's extraordinary to see the Taliban's collapse," he said. "A week ago they controlled some 90 percent of the country, now they control at most 20 percent of the country. Now it's obvious to everyone there that this is the time to get off of their side and to get onto the winning side."
Rumsfeld echoed that view, telling reporters "it is not a good time in Afghanistan to be part of the Taliban. That is good. That is to say that the pressure is working."
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