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More U.S. Marines Arrive, Squeezing
Taliban, Al-Qaeda
KABUL, Nov 28 (News Agencies) - More marines arrived Wednesday in southern Afghanistan as U.S. forces started putting the squeeze on al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, while the CIA confirmed one of its operatives had died in a bloody prison uprising in the north of the country.
The Pentagon announced that 750 U.S. Marines had arrived at a desert airstrip to set up a bridgehead within striking distance of Kandahar city, the last major stronghold of the Taliban and the al-Qaeda followers of U.S. terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden.
Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations of the Joint Staff, told a media briefing in Washington that U.S. strategy now is to bear down on the leadership of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, reduce their scope of action and break the chain of command to their forces.
"If we break the leadership of the Taliban or break the leadership of al-Qaeda there is reduced emphasis or reduced motivation for troops to stay loyal to the cause and continue to fight," he said.
"There are always going to be pockets who are going to fight to the end in any campaign. But getting the key leadership and breaking the chain of command is going to render much of that ineffective," he said.
The Taliban said Wednesday their leader Mullah Mohammad Omar was still safe after U.S. air strikes against a compound Washington claimed contained Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders.
Senior Taliban official Abdul Salam Zaeef denied the claim, telling the Afghan Islamic Press news agency that the bombing had hit the house of a local official.
"There is no Taliban or al-Qaeda center," said Zaeef, the ambassador to Pakistan before Islamabad closed down his embassy. "Neither Mullah Omar nor any Taliban official was there."
Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke said Tuesday's air strike on the compound had been effective, but acknowledged there was no indication Omar was in the complex.
Clarke said U.S. warplanes had struck the compound in a rapid response to real-time intelligence that "this was a good target."
She said video footage showed substantial damage to the complex.
The CIA, meanwhile, confirmed the first U.S. combat death in Afghanistan, saying the body of Johnny Michael Spann, a 32-year-old CIA officer, was recovered from a prison fortress at Mazar-i-Sharif where Taliban prisoners staged a bloody revolt against their Northern Alliance captors.
CIA director George Tenet said Spann was in the fortress where Taliban prisoners were being detained and questioned on Sunday, but U.S. officials provided no details on the circumstances surrounding his killing or how the prisoners managed to get arms to carry out the bloody uprising.
With war clouds gathering over Kandahar, meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) called on the Pakistan government to open up the border with Afghanistan to allow refugees to flee the anticipated final showdown between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance.
UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski told a news conference in the Pakistani city of Quetta that the arrival of U.S. troops near Kandahar had raised the prospect of thousands of residents who haven't yet fled being put to flight.
"If there's military action and people flee, we would like to see the [Pakistani] government opening the border and letting them across," he said.
"They should open the border and we can accommodate them. We have been amassing tents and other equipment. Logistically it's not a problem."
While the anti-Taliban forces were preparing to take Kandahar, U.S. officials said they would be shifting their sights from the cities to potential al-Qaeda hideouts.
They said they had narrowed the search for bin Laden and his supporters to two areas: one around Kandahar and the other near the eastern city of Jalalabad, including an elaborate cave complex called Tora Bora.
Bin Laden is said to be surrounded by loyal al-Qaeda members - mainly Chechens, Pakistanis and Arabs who have joined the Taliban.
Northern Alliance commanders said they believed many of those who staged the rebellion at the northern fortress were al-Qaeda members who preferred to fight to the death rather than surrender, despite being raked by heavy machine gun fire, blasted by tanks and bombed by U.S. warplanes.
The fort was Wednesday littered with bodies of the slain prisoners, burnt-out vehicles and shell casings, leading Iraq to claim the prisoners, who had surrendered at the weekend to Alliance forces in the northern city of Kunduz, had been massacred.
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