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Afghanistan/South Asia
Qaeda believed to be calling for action in Afghanistan
2004-11-26
Al Qaeda is believed to have called its followers to action in response to the massively attended vote last month that elected President Hamid Karzai, said a top US commander. A sign that Al Qaeda followers may be slipping back into the country was a recent discovery of a bomb-making operation in eastern Nangarhar province by a small group of Arab fighters killed in an encounter with US forces, said Major General Eric Olson, second in command of US forces here. "I think there now is a call out to do something to reverse the momentum that right now is going in the direction of freely elected governments," Gen Olson said in an interview here late Wednesday. He spoke to two reporters travelling with Gen John Abizaid, chief of the US Central Command, who arrived on Wednesday to meet commanders and visit with troops on the US Thanksgiving holiday.

Gen Abizaid's visit coincided with the killing of two US soldiers, and the wounding of a third by a roadside bomb in south central Uruzgan province, the latest in a surge of attacks on coalition forces. Gen Olson said, "There is a lot of recrimination and finger pointing about the failure to get something going, some kind of spectacular event. There are some groups that splintered off from the mainstream of the Taliban. They are going to try their own way. On the other end of the spectrum we've had Taliban fighters come to us, and tell us that they are through, they want to come over and they will put down their arms and stop fighting."

"What we see in most of Afghanistan is not a direct presence of Al Qaeda themselves, but Pakistanis certainly fighters who support Al Qaeda," said Gen Olson. "For example, the Arab fighters who were recently killed in Nangarhar province were fighters who could be classified as fighters who were supporting Al Qaeda. I don't think we ought to underestimate what's left of them. I think that Al Qaeda itself is still a viable organisation. It still has several key leaders who are still out there, who are still communicating, still giving guidance and direction. Bin Laden has not been recorded as giving guidance directly himself, but we've got reason to believe he's doing it indirectly." Al Qaeda's top leaders are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's rugged tribal areas along its mountainous border with Afghanistan, according to US military officials.
Posted by:Fred

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