-Caveat Lector-

http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=topnews&StoryID=457487

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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!

Marines Build Afghan Prison Camp for Al Qaeda

December 15, 2001 01:56 PM ET

CAMP RHINO, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. Marines are preparing a prison camp
at Kandahar airport for up to 300 al-Qaeda fighters who might surrender or be
captured in the Tora Bora mountains, an officer said Saturday.

"Our primary focus is on receiving prisoners from Tora Bora and building a
site for them," at the airport now occupied by the Marines, the officer said.

He expected that "between 100 and 300 prisoners" could be taken in the
eastern mountains.

A site has already been marked out at the airport, which hundreds of Marines
occupied on Friday to make it safe for military and eventual civilian use.

An Afghan militia commander in the Tora Bora region, Said Mohammad Palawan,
said some 300 al-Qaeda fighters who promised to surrender on Saturday had
failed to give themselves up by four hours after the agreed time.

But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said around 50 al-Qaeda fighters
surrendered as U.S. and Afghan forces advanced in fierce cave battles in the
Tora Bora area, south of the eastern city of Jalalabad.

The U.S. officer dismissed speculation that most of Osama bin Laden's
followers would fight to the death. But he warned that the prisoners would be
dangerous.

An uprising by prisoners in Mazar-i-Sharif last month was bloodily suppressed
by the Northern Alliance and U.S. warplanes. A CIA man and scores of Northern
Alliance fighters were killed.

"These are hardcore people," he said. "If they have a chance to overwhelm and
kill a guard, they will try to do that, even if it means their own death."

Al Qaeda prisoners will not behave like the thousands of generally "docile"
Iraqi troops taken prisoner after the 1991 Gulf War, he said.

The officer said it was important to detain as many of them as possible.
"These are bad guys who are against all of us."

The officer said Camp Rhino, the forward operating base in the desert south
of Kandahar, would be phased out early next year when Kandahar airport
becomes a fully operational base.

He said he expected the army to take over there from the Marines.

He added that the Marines had stopped "interdiction" operations they had
carried out for more than a week and turned the job over to the anti-Taliban
forces who took Kandahar on December 7.

Interdiction means stopping Taliban or al-Qaeda fighters trying to flee the
Kandahar area. "We've not come here to get involved in the policing
business," said the officer.

It is widely believed there are still high-level Taliban and al Qaeda
fugitives in the Kandahar area, he said.

"There are a number of small pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda that we don't
have control of," and nor does Gul Agha, the new Kandahar province governor
and Hamid Karzai, the new leader of Afghanistan, he added.





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