|
U.S. Steps Up Military Presence In Afghanistan
|
|
|
More American troops sent to
Afghanistan |
KABUL, Jan. 3 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The U.S. military is airlifting hundreds of paratroops into southern Afghanistan to join the hunt for leaders of Osama bin Laden's
Al-Qaeda network and his Taliban protectors.
As Washington's Afghan allies tried to negotiate the bloodless surrender of ousted Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Pentagon said it was counting on Afghanistan's interim government to hand him over if he was taken.
“The U.S. forces in Afghanistan continue to be focused on what we have said are our primary objectives right now. That is to pursue and get the Taliban and the al Qaeda leadership,'' Pentagon spokesperson, Victoria Clarke, said in Washington.
With its air campaign winding down, the U.S. military has been concentrating on ground operations, raiding suspected Taliban hideouts and questioning captured Taliban and
Al-Qaeda fighters.
However, the trail of Bin Laden himself, accused by Washington of masterminding the September 11 attacks in the U.S., appears to have gone cold in the mountainous expanse that divides Afghanistan from Pakistan.
Clarke said Wednesday that several hundred members of the Army's 101st Airborne Division had arrived at a military airfield in the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in the south.
The paratroops, which will eventually total more than 1,000, would replace more than 1,000 Marines already there, she said.
U.S. officials said earlier that the Marines would be diverted to other unspecified duties.
Clarke told reporters U.S. forces were now questioning 221 Al-Qaeda and Taliban “detainees'' at facilities in Afghanistan and aboard the Navy warship,
Bataan, in the northern Indian Ocean.
She spoke as Afghan officials negotiated with trapped Taliban fighters. “It's been made very clear that we expect to have control of him [Mullah Omar],'' said Clarke.
A spokesman for Haji Gullalai, intelligence chief in Kandahar, said envoys sent to negotiate the surrender of Mullah Omar had returned, and they hoped the talks would lead to his capture without bloodshed.
“We are still waiting to hear from them about our demands,'' the spokesman said. “Basically, we have told them clearly that we want the issue to be resolved without bloodshed and it is their decision how they want to respond.''
Mullah Omar, a reclusive cleric rarely seen in public, is believed to have taken refuge in the mountains around Baghran in southern Helmand province, some 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of
Kandahar.
He is thought to have up to 1,000 fighters defending him.
It was not clear if he was under the control of local tribal chieftains who might be prepared to hand him over.
As post-war Afghanistan struggles to rebuild itself, a team from 12 nations contributing to a British-led foreign security force in Kabul began surveying the shattered capital.
The 25-strong team from Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Romania met British troops at the force's headquarters in a dilapidated former sports club in the center of the city.
Impoverished by more than 20 years of warfare, foreign invasion, anarchy and Taliban misrule, Afghanistan's New Year began on a bitter note, with reports that U.S. bombs had killed 107 civilians at a village near the town of
Gardez.
Local Afghans have accused the U.S. military of destroying a compound used by
Al-Qaeda and Taliban, but Washington has denied the accusation.
A U.S. intelligence official said the military believed its bombs had killed Taliban intelligence chief, Qari
Ahmadullah, during the last week of December. “We think he's most likely dead,'' the official said on condition of anonymity.
Earlier, The New York Times newspaper quoted Afghan interim leader, Hamid Karzai, as saying he was worried about the mounting civilian casualties.
“We want to finish terrorists in Afghanistan -- we want to finish them completely ... But we must also make sure our civilians do not suffer,'' he told the paper.
Meanwhile, British demolition experts raced to remove land mines from sites that will house a new international security force.
A British official in Kabul said British military engineers were scouring the ground at five sites selected to house the U.N.-mandated International Security Assistance Force
(ISAF), which is expected to number 4,500 by the end of the month, for mines and unexploded ordnance, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Britain's military spokesman in Kabul, Major Guy Richardson, said that the five bases were not yet free of the mines, rockets, mortars, artillery shells and other weaponry that litter Afghanistan.
With a further 60 British staff officers scheduled to arrive late Thursday, Richardson said de-mining and bomb disposal efforts at the bases and at Kabul International Airport were a matter of priority.
"The bases are not yet safe," Richardson said. "EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) operations are still under way."
More than 20 officers from 12 of the 17 countries that will contribute to the force are now inspecting the sites to assess when they will be ready for billeting, Richardson said.
The five ISAF bases will be clustered in Kabul's north-east; two will be located along strategic roads linking Kabul with the former Soviet air base at
Bagram, 50 kilometers (31 miles) to the north, and with the eastern city of
Jalalabad.
Two separate bases will be inside Kabul International Airport, while the fifth -- the peacekeepers' headquarters -- will remain within the old Afghan army officers' sports club, across from the U.S. Embassy.
|
