Allies enter mountain lair

6 Dec, 2001 11:32 AM6 mins to read

KABUL - United States forces pursued the "messy, dirty job" of finishing off the leadership of the Taleban and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda as Afghanistan's new leaders began beating their swords into ploughshares yesterday.

An anti-Taleban force of 2000, backed by US airstrikes, captured cave-riddled hills in eastern Afghanistan, killing 22 foreign fighters loyal to bin Laden.

Mohammad Amin, a spokesman for Hazrat Ali, leading local fighters in pursuit of bin Laden, said the militant might have fled to the Spin Ghar mountains west of the Tora Bora area. He said fighting was raging in several areas of Tora Bora, a rugged district 55km south of Jalalabad, amid heavy air raid in support of the anti-Taleban forces.

"It is very intense fighting," Amin said.

In a reminder of Afghanistan's perilous state after 23 years of strife, the Pashtun tribal chief named to lead a new interim government narrowly escaped grave harm from a stray US bomb that killed three US special forces troops and five of their Afghan allies.

US officials said Hamid Karzai was in the area when the 908kg "smart" bomb dropped by a US B-52 bomber struck north of the Taleban base of Kandahar. He apparently received slight injuries.

"We have heard that Karzai has been out, he's been visible, he seems to be doing fine," said Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke.

The "friendly fire" incident also injured 19 Americans and 20 Afghans.

US troops under fire called in close air support against Taleban positions, but it was not known why the bomb missed its target.

The Pentagon said it had started an investigation.

It was the worst incident of friendly fire involving American troops since the US-led bombing campaign began in Afghanistan on October 7 in response to the hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"We have not perfected a technology that is perfect in its execution," said Rear-Admiral John Stufflebeem of the errant, satellite-guided bomb.

The only previous US combat death in Afghanistan was that of a CIA agent killed in fighting in northern Afghanistan.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, describing the war in Afghanistan as a "complicated, long, difficult, messy, dirty job", said Taleban and al Qaeda leaders were alive and at large. Bin Laden, his top aide Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar are all believed to be in Afghanistan.

Unconfirmed intelligence reports suggested yesterday that US airstrikes may have killed a son or son-in-law of bin Laden.

The highest-level al Qaeda member known to have been killed in the bombing campaign was Mohammed Atef, an Egyptian militant who was a close aide to bin Laden.

Bin Laden was at one stage said to have with him three wives and more than a dozen children.

Prodded by diplomats and promises of billions of dollars in aid, Afghanistan's feuding warlords and tribal chiefs put aside old hostilities yesterday as the militarily dominant Northern Alliance agreed to share power with exiled groups.

But powerful ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum said he would boycott the interim Afghan government.

Dostum, whose forces dominate a swathe of northern territory including the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, said his mainly Uzbek Junbish-i-Milli faction was not fairly represented under the accord.

"We will not go to Kabul until there is a proper government in place."

Dostum said he had demanded that the Foreign Ministry be allocated to his faction, which is part of the militarily dominant Northern Alliance. Instead it got the portfolios of agriculture and mining and industry. More than half of the 30 posts in the interim government went to the Northern Alliance.

Major Western aid donors meeting in Berlin were set to agree today to pump emergency aid into Afghanistan, warning that thousands of Afghans face starvation. Nations pledged $US600 million ($1.46 billion) in humanitarian aid in October.

One British aid official said this week that the reconstruction of Afghanistan would probably cost between $US5 billion and $US10 billion over 10 years.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said he would be drumming up financial support for the new Afghan government when he meets Nato allies in Brussels today. "There's a lot that has to be done other than just 25 people showing up and saying, we're the new government. They are also going back with is no money."

The 15-member UN Security Council was expected to endorse the Afghan accord in a resolution today. But a second resolution authorising a multinational peacekeeping force would have to wait until council members persuade the US military to accept one.

UN officials want the force to be deployed before the end of the month, but the Pentagon has balked at that, saying a deployment could complicate its own operations in Afghanistan.

In other developments:

* People living in Kandahar could be facing catastrophe if food stocks continue to dwindle as suppliers steer clear of the bombing zone, the United Nations' World Food Programme has warned.

Prices of staple foods have doubled in the past few days after the bombing of Kandahar, say residents who have crossed over into Pakistan.

The main road from Kandahar to the border town of Spin Boldak has been under heavy attack in recent weeks but there have been reports that the US is now targeting an unsealed alternate route.

Some travellers have reported seeing food trucks lying destroyed on the side of the roads. Commercial food trucks had not travelled to Kandahar for two weeks, said food programme spokesman Mike Huggins.

* An estimated 40,000 negatives of images taken by President John F. Kennedy's personal photographer are believed to have been destroyed in a bank vault beneath the World Trade Center.

One of Jacques Lowe's most famous images shows Kennedy leaning against his White House desk in November 1961. Lowe died in May at age 71.

Lowe's daughter, Thomasina Lowe, said her father kept his collection of negatives in a safe-deposit vault at the JP Morgan Chase bank branch at the World Trade Center. She said they were probably worth $US2 million and were not insured.

* Three months after the trade center attack, victims' families are being forced to face the ghastly possibility that many of the dead were vaporised and may never be identified.

So far, fewer than 500 victims have been positively identified out of the roughly 3000 feared dead. Sixty were identified solely through DNA.

Victims' families have been allowed to obtain death certificates without proof of a body, but many families place great importance on an identification based on remains.

Nearly 10,000 body parts have been pulled from the mountains of mangled metal.

But Dr Charles Hirsch, the chief medical examiner, triggered an angry response when he told grieving relatives that many bodies had been vaporised and were beyond identification.

Spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said he meant that bodies were consumed by blazing fuel from the two crashed airliners, or "rendered into dust" when the 335m skyscrapers collapsed.

Dr Michael Baden, the state's chief forensic pathologist, said in September that most bodies should be identifiable because the fires, while hot enough to melt steel, did not reach the 3200-degree, 30-minute level necessary to incinerate a body.

- AGENCIES

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