The hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders continues in Afghanistan, and U.S. officials are cautioning the public that while the conflict seems to be ending, it isn’t over yet.
The fighting is concentrating around the city of Kandahar and the mountainous eastern region of Tora Bora, where bin Laden is rumored to be hiding. Small regions of fighting in other areas of the country have appeared recently as well.
“The only thing that’s changed really in the last day or so has been what’s taking place in Kandahar. In the north and the west, the what we used to call opposition forces, and I suppose we should for a few more days, are going after pockets of Taliban and that is somewhat new,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told The Washington Post. “They’re trying to reduce the dangers to humanitarian assistance and they’re trying to reduce the risk to everybody, actually, by having these folks roaming around with weapons. And they’re mostly Afghan Taliban as opposed to al Qaeda.”
Fighting, Rumsfeld said, is happening in “three or four locations” of Afghanistan.
“[In] Jalalabad to the border area east of Kabul is an effort on the ground by Afghan forces with, in some cases U.S. Special Forces with them, to try to systematically work their way through areas that they think al Qaeda are located in, and they are finding them,” Rumsfeld told the Post. “It’s working well. It’s dangerous and it’s a messy business, but they’re at it.”
The city of Kandahar has seen fierce fighting and mixed reports of victory and surrenders, Rumsfeld said, leave the scene confusing and dangerous.
“The Kandahar situation is a bit like a Wild West show. It is very untidy. There are all kinds of reports, some of which may be true, many of which probably aren’t, and a lot of speculation about what’s happening,” Rumsfeld told the Post. “Some Taliban are turning in weapons, others are not. There’s a good deal of confusion about what might happen prospectively.”
Rumsfeld said that fighters were trying to avoid the type of uprising seen last month at Mazar-e Sharif, where an American was killed.
“I think it’s a very dangerous situation in the sense that you saw what happened up in Mazar where people kept their weapons, killed people, started a major firefight, and a lot of people got killed. That is entirely possible here in Kandahar,” Rumsfeld told the Post. “I suppose it will be opposition forces as well as United States forces obviously – that are aware of what happened up in Mazar and one would think they’d be a good deal more careful about checking people. But there are a lot of Taliban and al Qaeda people inside of Kandahar.”
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS’s “Face the Nation” about the Taliban’s control of Kandahar.
“There are reports that the Taliban control there has broken down. We think it has to a great extent, but there is still a lot of confusion and there probably will be for several days to come,” Myers said on the Sunday morning show. “It’s that – that is, it’s not over there. There is still a substantial number of Taliban fighters there, to include foreign fighters fighting for the Taliban.
“And our – our main purpose right now, our main goal is to ensure that any of the foreign fighters or Taliban that try to escape, that we can interdict them and capture those we want and interrogate them and so forth,” Myers added. “And that’s one of the main missions that our U.S. Marines have that are in the vicinity of Kandahar right now.”
Myers also said Sunday that the United States has an idea where bin Laden is.
“We’re still on the hunt for all the al Qaeda leadership. And [bin Laden] is part of that, but not the only part of that,” Myers told Fox’s “Sunday Morning.” “In the hunt up there, we think we know in general where he is. Can’t be sure, but we think we know.”
And the net is closing, Myers said.
“And we’ve got – we’re approaching it from a couple of different directions. One is we’ve got opposition folks that are prosecuting the war against the al Qaeda up there in the hills. The fighting has been very, very intense,” Myers told Fox.
On the Net: The Pentagon: http://www.defenselink.mil
