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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scoobah who wrote (603)	11/26/2001 10:44:14 AM
From: Scoobah	Respond to of 32591

U.S. tightens noose on Kandahar By Reuters U.S. troops and local tribesmen seized territory around Kandahar on Monday for a final push on the Taliban's last stronghold and the rugged hills where Osama bin Laden is believed to be holed up. Launching a new phase in the seven-week-old war on the Taliban and bin Laden's al Qaeda forces, hundreds of U.S. Marines swooped in to an airstrip outside Kandahar, in striking distance of the powerbase of Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. "In short order you'll have 1,000-plus Marines in the backyard of the Taliban," said Colonel Peter Miller, chief of staff for Taskforce 58, which comprises nearly 9,000 Marines. Local Afghans identified the captured facility as Dolangi airstrip, about 90 km (55 miles) southwest of Kandahar, rebuilt and used by bin Laden. They said Mullah Omar's personal helicopter had been parked there a few days ago. There were conflicting reports over the fate of Kandahar's main airport, about 20 km south of the city. Anti-Taliban tribal forces said U.S. troops were moving into the airport, but a Marine press officer said the facility had not been seized. A witness in Kandahar said Taliban fighters were still guarding the airport gates. As the Taliban's final redoubt in the north, the besieged city of Kunduz, fell to Northern Alliance forces after days of fighting and chaotic surrender negotiations, the focus of the forces arrayed against the Taliban switched to Kandahar. Ground War Ferried in at night by waves of helicopters from ships in the Arabian Sea, the Marines prepared for what could be the final stage in the hunt for bin Laden -- ground war. Washington blames the Saudi-born militant and his al Qaida network for the September 11 attacks on the United States. "They picked this fight. You're going to finish it," the commanding officer of the battalion landing team, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Bourne, told his men as they lined up to board helicopters on the USS Peleliu amphibious assault ship in the Arabian Sea just before dusk on Sunday. Heavily armed AC-130 gunships and attack jets pummelled targets in Kandahar overnight and again in the morning, witnesses in the city said. A tribal leader who has been in Afghanistan for weeks said Kandahar, spiritual home of the Taliban and springboard for its conquest of most of the country in the mid-1990s, was sure to fall. "I won't predict anything in terms of time, but it will definitely go," Hamid Karzai told Reuters. One of the most heavily mined areas in the world after 23 years of war in Afghanistan, Kandahar is defended by up to 5,000 foreign fighters and 12,000 regular Taliban soldiers, according to Taliban defectors who have fled to Pakistan. Kunduz falls The bitter defense of Kunduz by Taliban fighters and Pakistani, Arab and Chechen volunteers loyal to bin Laden finally crumbled as ethnic Tajik troops under commander Mohammad Daoud said they had taken the city on Monday. "We have captured Kunduz and there is no fighting," Alliance spokesman Alauddin told Reuters . Another spokesman, said the city's defenders -- even foreign volunteers expected to fight to the death -- were laying down their weapons. But in the stronghold of ex-communist warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an imposing mud-walled citadel outside Mazar-i-Sharif to the west of Kunduz, one group of captured al Qaida fighters mounted a bloody last stand. Seizing guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers from their captors on Sunday, hundreds of foreign fighters in the 19th century Qala-i-Janghi fortress staged a revolt that turned into a full-scale firefight in which hundreds were killed. U.S. AC-130 gunships and MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters pounded the fort into the night. The roar of jets, the echo of explosions and the rattle of gunfire resounded through the darkness. The Northern Alliance said the revolt had been defeated, but some of the Taliban prisoners were thought to have broken out of the 20-metre (65-ft) walls and crenellated ramparts of the fort into the dusty steppes of northern Afghanistan. Hunt for Bin Laden Some reports put bin Laden near the Khyber Pass or even outside Afghanistan. But the United States believes he is probably in the inhospitable terrain around Kandahar. The Americans have been hunting him with ground operatives, unmanned spyplanes and remote-sensing technology. They also hope another tactic will help capture bin Laden -- leaflets have been dropped on southern Afghanistan to publicize the $25 million price on his head. As anti-Taliban forces closed in on Kandahar, the diplomatic focus was shifting to Bonn where representatives of Afghanistan's fractious factions meet from Tuesday for talks on building a broad-based post-Taliban government. Military progress against the Taliban has left diplomatic progress on mapping out Afghanistan's future far behind, and the Bonn talks are seen as a first step towards a new order. The Northern Alliance has repeatedly rebuffed suggestions that "moderate Taliban" participate in a new government, but the nominal head of the Alliance said on Sunday that some former Taliban officials might be allowed a role.

To: Scoobah who wrote (603)	11/26/2001 12:30:24 PM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

I've always wondered how much they've gotten away with because of the simple language barrier. How many western journalists know any Arabic, let alone enough to verify themselves what is being said at the source. I am certain that Arafat has fully and cynically profited from this from the beginning. Remember how the Saudis sent our ambassador, Hume Horan, packing after only six months? Couldn't have someone really able to understand what was actually going on.... nytimes.com What the Saudis didn't like about him, though, was that he was the best Arabic speaker in the State Department