Hindu Vivek Kendra
A RESOURCE CENTER FOR THE PROMOTION OF HINDUTVA
   
 
 
«« Back
U.S. Might Pursue Qaeda and Taliban to Pakistan Lairs

U.S. Might Pursue Qaeda and Taliban to Pakistan Lairs

Author: Dexter Filkins
Publication: The New York Times
Date: March 21, 2002

The commander of American forces here said today that they might cross the border into Pakistan to capture or kill Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters widely believed to have found sanctuary there.

In an interview at his headquarters here, Maj. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck of the 10th Mountain Division said chasing Al Qaeda and the Taliban into Pakistan would be a "last resort" carried out with the approval of Pakistani leaders.

Just 20 miles from the border with Pakistan, near Khost, American troops were attacked from several directions with mortars, small arms and rocket-propelled grenades for about an hour on Tuesday night, American military officials said. One soldier received a bullet wound in the left arm.

"Our forces returned fire, and B-1's and AC-130 gunships responded," Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., deputy director of current operations for the Joint Staff, said during a Pentagon news briefing.

General Hagenbeck said it was not clear whether the Americans were caught in fighting between Afghan factions or had come under attack from Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters.

American commanders have said fighting in Afghanistan may increase as the snows melt in spring. There also have been growing signs that American military leaders are thinking about broadening the field of action by moving against Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, where the government says it has deployed thousands of troops to seal the border.

General Hagenbeck suggested that sealing the border was not the Pakistani government's highest priority. "I think Pakistan is more focused on tensions with India," he said.

General Hagenbeck declined to give specifics but said any eventual move into Pakistan would more likely be planned to thwart movements by the opposing side rather than to stage a frantic chase across national frontiers.

"Hot pursuit would probably be my last resort," General Hagenbeck said. "What we would try to do is anticipate any type of operations that would cause the enemy to go into Pakistan, and we would try to coordinate with the Pakistan government, and our ambassador in Pakistan, before we did any of those kinds of operations."

This week, Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of American forces in the region, asked Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, to take part in joint military actions to apprehend Al Qaeda and Taliban forces moving back and forth across the border, according to a senior Pakistani government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

General Musharraf made no decision on General Franks' request, the senior Pakistani official said.

On Tuesday, George M. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, said he needed "a lot more help" from countries where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters may have fled.

"There's still many, many points of exit that people in small numbers can get out," Mr. Tenet said.

A decision by American forces to cross the border and strike Al Qaeda sanctuaries is politically explosive in Pakistan, where General Musharraf's decision to side with America in its battle against militant Islam is already drawing widespread opposition.

The people living in the Afghan-Pakistani border region are overwhelmingly members of the Pashtun ethnic group, as were most of the Taliban.

The Pakistani government has denied knowingly harboring Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, although its intelligence agencies routinely aided the Taliban until General Musharraf decided to break with the Afghan mullahs after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on Sept. 11.

The rugged, mountainous tribal areas of northwest Pakistan have long provided a safe haven for guerrillas and smugglers of all sorts. When the Afghan fighters known as mujahadeen were battling the decade-long occupation by the Soviet Union, they used the area as a staging ground for attacks and were rarely chased across the border by Soviet forces.

Last November, when American officials believed that they had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, a large number of Al Qaeda forces, and possibly Mr. bin Laden himself, were thought to have slipped into Pakistan.

Recent clashes with American forces suggest that Taliban and Al Qaeda forces may be using the region as a safe haven, traveling back and forth across the border to stage strikes against the Americans and then retreat to safety.

The Shah-i-Kot Valley, the scene of a big American military operation that was declared over this week, lies just 45 miles north of the border, and General Hagenbeck said today that many Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters had entered the area from the area south of Shah-i-Kot.

Pakistani officials said today that a group of seven suspected Al Qaeda members arrested on Tuesday might have been trying to enter Afghanistan from Pakistan. Earlier this week, a team of American Special Forces killed 16 fighters they suspected were Al Qaeda members near the Pakistani border who had fled the Shah-i-Kot battlefield.

The porousness of Pakistan's border and the possibility that Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are hiding out in Pakistan dominated the discussion between General Franks and General Musharraf, the senior Pakistani government official said.

Even as the operation in Shah-i-Kot is said to be winding down, American military leaders have been hinting at a busy springtime. With the snows melting in the mountains where Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, and possibly leaders, are believed to be hiding, American officials have said they may undertake similar operations there.

Britain announced this week that it would dispatch 1,700 combat soldiers to take part in action in Afghanistan, putting British troops in the position of prosecuting war as well as heading the international security force deployed in Kabul to keep the peace there. "This is seasonally the campaign season," General Hagenbeck said. "We expect to see some increased enemy activity."

The general said that for now his forces were focusing on Paktia Province, which borders Pakistan and was the site of the Shah-i-Kot operation. He said they were watching that area "because historically that is where the Al Qaeda and Taliban has either been supported or accepted, and the local population has been neutral."

Citing Taliban sources, The Associated Press said today that several senior Taliban leaders were living in Pakistan, including the former defense minister, Mullah Obeidullah; the former interior minister, Mullah Abdul Razzak; and a deputy prime minister, Mullah Hasan Akhund.

In an interview aired Wednesday on the BBC, Hamid Mir, the editor of Ausaf, a militant Islamic newspaper in Pakistan, said that 5,000 Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters had massed in the Pakistani tribal areas, and that large groups had also coalesced near the Afghan cities of Kandahar, Ghazni and Gardez in Afghanistan.

Mr. Mir said Mullah Razak had told him just before the Taliban's military collapse in November that the movement would melt away into the mountains along the Pakistani-Afghan border and regroup in the spring.
 


Back                          Top

«« Back
 
 
 
  Search Articles
 
  Special Annoucements