Assault Set Back Al Qaeda, U.S. Says

BAGRAM, Afghanistan â€”  The U.S.-led Operation Anaconda has failed to produce any top Al Qaeda leaders, and an American commander said Thursday that the terrorist network’s upper echelon might not have been in the Shahi Kot valley when the battle began.

But even without apparently capturing its ultimate quarry--terrorist leader Osama bin Laden--the biggest U.S.-led ground assault since the 1991 Persian Gulf War has removed “hundreds� from the rolls of international terror, most of them from the Russian republic of Chechnya, Uzbekistan and even China, said Maj. Gen. Frank L. Hagenbeck, commander of the coalition waging the battle in eastern Afghanistan.

“We’ve rid the world of hundreds of trained killers who will now not slaughter innocent men, women and children,� Hagenbeck said.

He added that he believed that few of the estimated 1,000 cadres who fought in the valley about 100 miles south of this former Soviet air base had escaped the U.S.-led dragnet, which has become a cave-by-cave search for Al Qaeda fighters thought to be holed up there.

“To this point, we do know that we’ve killed some second- and third-tier Al Qaeda leadership,� Hagenbeck said. “The big names that you and I are most familiar with, however, indications are that they were not in this valley as we came here. We did not have information prior to the attack that they would be here, but we have indications where they are, and I can assure you that we will track them down and get them before this is over.�

Hagenbeck later clarified that he had no “actionable intelligence� on Bin Laden’s whereabouts and wouldn’t specify whether he believes that the Al Qaeda leader remains in Afghanistan.

Thursday night, U.S. and Canadian troops spotted four gunmen believed to be Al Qaeda in the Shahi Kot valley and alerted pro-U.S. Afghan forces to give chase. A firefight followed, but all four of the enemy soldiers escaped, said Maj. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for the Army’s 10th Mountain Division at the Bagram air base.

Hagenbeck’s statements came amid reports from Afghan forces that Al Qaeda fighters fled en masse through U.S. positions and that few bodies of enemy forces were evident on the battlefield.

Even the holdouts’ commander, Mullah Saifur Rahman Mansour, and his three brothers apparently remained at large, although Hagenbeck vowed that “we are right on their backs.�

In the end, the campaign appeared as frustrating as the fight for the Tora Bora caves in December. In both cases, intensive bombing left coalition forces in possession of an empty landscape, sifting for clues in the rubble and caves--and wondering how many enemy fighters had actually been there and how many had slipped away.

At Shahi Kot, at least, U.S. military leaders are convinced that few enemies escaped and that the bulk of them--hundreds of fighters--were wiped out during the campaign.

But that wasn’t the view of some of the United States’ Afghan allies, who doubt that the number of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters killed could be as high as the U.S. claims, and who assume that the number of escapees is much higher.

Commander Amrullah, an officer just back from Shahi Kot who was preparing to head back with his troops to Kabul, the capital, said Thursday that he had compared notes with fellow commanders in Afghan Gen. Gul Hydar’s force during a late-night meeting Wednesday. The consensus was that fewer than 100 bodies were strewn around the valley, he said.

“I personally saw 15 to 17 bodies, but based on what I saw I could conclude 40 to 50 people have been killed,� Amrullah said. “However, we did not go to the high areas or to the remote positions in order to know totally.�

Many more people had escaped, he said: “Probably 500 to 600, or maybe 1,000, might have got away through the narrow pathways to Pakistan.�

He pointed out that the exodus might have started even before the battle, assuming that the valley’s Al Qaeda and Taliban inhabitants were forewarned and prepared for an attack.

Another Afghan commander, Gen. Abdul Wahab Joyendah, agreed that hundreds had escaped and said that he expected them to regroup farther north and try to attack the interim government from a base closer to Kabul.

One piece of evidence that many fled was the fact that the leader, Mansour, apparently survived, and he would have had many people with him, Joyendah said.

Hydar said, however, that the body count wasn’t the main issue.

“The big achievement by the Americans was that they annihilated the biggest redoubt of the Taliban that remained,� he said. “Now they [Al Qaeda and the Taliban fighters] will be attacked wherever they run.�

The campaign would also stand as a warning to would-be Taliban supporters around the country, he said.

Hagenbeck suggested that the reason for the apparent lack of bodies in the battlefield was the devastating intensity of the bombs dropped on three villages in the Shahi Kot valley, where body parts lie amid the rubble.

“We have pretty credible information that after about 36 to 48 hours into the fight, that there was a call from the Al Qaeda leaders of the local area to bring forth hundreds of wooden coffins,� he said. “And on the fourth day of the fight, there was a movement and a call to bring in trucks and SUVs to extract their dead. The coffins never got in, and the SUVs and any vehicles that tried to enter the area never got in.�

During the first week of Operation Anaconda, Hagenbeck said, Al Qaeda fighters moved into the battle zone, boosting the estimated initial force of between 150 and 250 fighters to 1,000 or more. But even with the United States’ sophisticated spy technology and numerous Special Forces operatives on the ground, a small number of Al Qaeda soldiers could have escaped through the mountains east of the valley, Hagenbeck acknowledged.

“There are some people that have been able to slip through here, I’m certain,� he said. “We’ve got folks where we understand and believe that some of the Al Qaeda leaders and their foot soldiers are currently located. We’re not going to let loose of these guys.�

Although those remaining in the valley were reduced to “double digits, probably less than 100,� Hagenbeck said, the possibility remained for another large massing of enemy forces, and another ground assault similar in scale to Operation Anaconda.

Several of the Shahi Kot cave hide-outs have yielded a trove of intelligence and weapons.

Overnight, Hilferty said, troops searched 10 caves and blew up 10 fixed mortar positions.

“We continue to find bomb-making devices; we’ve had extensive weapons caches; we’ve found manuals, meticulously recorded, on how to attack individuals, cars, how to blow up bridges,� Hagenbeck said.

In addition, both the forces searching the caves and those elsewhere in the valley have been taking DNA samples from the dead to determine whether top leaders may have been killed.