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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Mountain Storm on since March 7 |
| 2004-03-13 |
| U.S.-led forces have launched a sweeping new offensive in Afghanistan’s remote southern and eastern mountains aimed at crushing the Taliban and al Qaeda and snaring militant leaders including Osama bin Laden. Operation "Mountain Storm" was given additional significance by concerns al Qaeda could be behind Thursday’s bomb attacks on Madrid trains that killed 200 people. Spain’s government, however, insists the blasts were the work of Basque separatists. U.S. military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Bryan Hilferty told a Kabul news briefing on Saturday the offensive had begun on March 7 and involved troops from the 13,500-strong U.S.-led force backed by air support. Asked if it could lead to the capture of bin Laden, Hilferty said: "This operation is aimed like the rest at rebuilding and reconstructing and providing enduring security in Afghanistan, so it’s certainly about more than one person. The headline writer missed this paragraph "The leaders of al Qaeda and...the Taliban need to be brought to justice and will be." It is unlikely bin Laden would be directly involved in detailed planning of any specific operation in western Europe, but he is considered the key figure of authority in al Qaeda. The senior military commander for Afghanistan’s southern region, General Haji Granai, told Reuters U.S. aircraft attacked a truck carrying 12 suspected Taliban guerrillas in Maruf district of Kandahar province on Thursday, killing all of them. Hilferty said he had no information on such an attack, though he told the briefing U.S. forces had carried out a small-scale air assault in the south which he declined to detail. The campaign comes after a surge in militant attacks on aid workers and Afghan government and U.S.-led forces and ahead of presidential elections supposed to held in June. U.S. defense officials told Reuters in Washington on Friday that "Mountain Storm" was timed to exploit improving weather in the region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where bin Laden he is believed to be. A Taliban spokesman said U.S. forces had launched offensives from the Waza Khuwa region of Paktika province to the Yakubi region of neighboring Khost province. But he said the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who headed its government that harbored the al Qaeda network, was safe. "Mullah Omar is in a very safe place. But we don’t know about Osama bin Laden," Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters by telephone. U.S. officials said the secretive Task Force 121, a covert If rooters knows about it, it ain’t covert commando team of Special Operations troops and CIA personnel involved in the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq in December, has relocated people and equipment to the border region. Pakistan has in recent weeks moved forces into the lawless tribal lands on its side of the Afghan border in the search for militants. Lieutenant-General David Barno, the top U.S. general in Afghanistan, said last month the United States and Pakistan were moving toward coordinated operations along the border. In Pakistan’s South Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan, tribal elders gave 24 hours down from 72 to anyone harboring al Qaeda and other militants to surrender, saying that if they failed to do so they would pursue them with a 600-man tribal militia. U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in late 2001 after the September 11, 2001 attacks, which are blamed on al Qaeda. Rooters fact checkers are still diligently working to confirm that it was al Qaeda but their calls are not being returned by al Qaeda. Perhaps if Rooters would check the Yellow Pages under T for terrorist instead of M for militants, they might have more luck. |
| Posted by:Mr. Davis |