U.S. Says Al Qaeda Network Rendered Ineffective
Sat Mar 23, 6:58 AM ET
By Christine Hauser
BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The al Qaeda network can no longer function effectively as its leaders are on the run and some of its most experienced middle-level operatives are dead, senior U.S. military officials said on Saturday.
They said U.S.-led coalition forces were still searching for the top members of the group Washington blames for the September 11 terror attacks, but they gave no indication whether its leader Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) was dead or his whereabouts known.
"Their means of carrying out some of their strikes and controlling areas is now gone," the task force's chief of operations, Lt. Colonel David Gray, told reporters.
"When you've got leaders on the run that's a good thing. Because they don't have a lot of time to sit there and plan out these operations," he said at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
"What Anaconda has done, we believe, is that we have killed off some of his most experienced fighters and trainers," he said in an assessment of "Operation Anaconda" in which U.S. officials say hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers were killed.
"In this case, killing off that middle level of leadership sets them back several years, at least in terms of regenerating, if they will be able to regenerate at all. That's a very important blow to the network."
Lt. Colonel Jasey Briley, the coalition's intelligence chief, said the high number of deaths, which some Afghan commanders say are exaggerated, had deprived al Qaeda of its ability to plan operations.
"An upper level person can't operate without operatives," Briley said at Bagram, the staging ground for air and ground strikes, including "Operation Anaconda" which lasted more than two weeks.
"The al Qaeda is a network and we have hampered or impaired their ability to continue operations," he said.
BRITISH REINFORCEMENTS
"Operation Anaconda" was the biggest ground battle of the latest Afghan War, fought in the rugged mountains around the Shahi Kot Valley in the eastern province of Paktia.
Eight U.S. soldiers were killed and U.S. officers say one reason relatively few al Qaeda and Taliban bodies have been found is that some were blown to bits in air strikes.
But U.S. officials have admitted al Qaeda and the defiant Taliban are far from finished.
That was evident in Britain's promise to dispatch another 1,700 soldiers to join the coalition war in Britain's biggest combat deployment since the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).
A British spokesman said on Saturday the first batch of Royal Marine Commandos would arrive within the week and all 1,700 were expected to be ready for action by mid-April.
They "will be coming to work alongside the Americans in future operations against the al Qaeda terrorists," Sergeant Steve Melbourne told reporters.
"Operation Anaconda," in which the last major firefights were on March 13 when U.S., Canadian and Afghan troops stormed caves, mountain bunkers and trenches, denied al Qaeda a major base of operations, Gray said.
"It was pretty clear that this was a sanctuary for them," he said.
Gray said it was clear those fighting from the caves and rugged hillsides were middle-level al Qaeda operatives. "Just by the way they fought, by the type and quality of equipment that they carried. These were not raw recruits."
MELTING INTO BACKGROUND
Intelligence chief Briley said those who did escape had either moved or blended into areas where the local population supports them, such as Paktia and neighboring Khost province.
He was asked if the trail of the al Qaeda leaders had gone cold.
"As with all of the leadership of Taliban and al Qaeda, we continue to track their activity and to use all the different types of methods we have available," he replied.
Gray said the coalition forces would try to "keep them on the run and hopefully find them and capture or kill them."
"It's to now get their leadership looking over their shoulder, worrying more about their own personal survival than about functioning in the network," he said. |
