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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Surrender in doubt; troops slip away
Dec. 11 — U.S. Marines are patrolling outside Kandahar to head off any
Taliban or al-Qaida trying to escape. Jim Miklaszewski reports.
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
Dec. 12 — U.S. warplanes resumed bombing Wednesday morning around
Tora Bora as U.S.-allied rebel forces prepared to enter caves in search of
cornered al-Qaida forces. The foreign fighters allied with Osama bin Laden,
who have been holed up inside the caves, turned their backs on a surrender
agreement, insisting that they would only turn themselves in to the United
Nations, according to Afghan reports.
“AN INTENSE AND SEVERE fight” is now likely, an Afghan commander
identified as Yunas told The Washington Post. “The Arabs want to surrender,”
said the commander, but “the Americans wouldn’t let them.”
The al-Qaida fighters had been expected to lay down their weapons by 8
a.m. Wednesday local time (10:30 p.m. ET Tuesday) and then walk a short
distance to an alliance position where they were to have been searched.
Trucks then were to have taken them to the alliance’s local command post at
Agom village, about 3 miles to the southeast, where they were to be detained.
Mohammed Zaman, defense chief of the U.S.-allied “eastern tribal
alliance,” told NBC News’ Bob Campi after the deadline that the surrender
had not taken place and that alliance troops would begin entering local caves
in search of the al-Qaida forces.
The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press, which has close ties to the
al-Qaida-supporting Taliban militia, reported that at the last minute, the
fighters imposed a new condition: that they would surrender only to U.N.
officials — and only in the presence of representatives of their own
countries.
‘The military mission remains to destroy al-Qaida.’
— AIR FORCE GEN. RICHARD MYERS
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff A group of al-Qaida fighters
made radio contact on Tuesday to discuss surrender terms, but it was unclear
how many al-Qaida fighters had been talking of surrender. In the past, forces
loyal to bin Laden have vowed to fight to the death.
There was no immediate reaction from U.S. officials, but Air Force
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier had
stressed that there was “no confirmation” of surrender talks. “The military
mission remains to destroy al-Qaida,” he told reporters.
Angry anti-Taliban fighters blocked reporters from moving to the
intended surrender area, but Western journalists reported hearing gunfire.
B-52 RESUMES BOMBING
A U.S. B-52 bomber began making new bombing runs about an hour after
Wednesday’s deadline passed, the Arabic-language news agency al-Jazeera and
the British Broadcasting Corp. reported from the front lines Wednesday
morning. U.S. forces had continued bombing through the night in the general
area to try to block escape routes for Taliban and al-Qaida troops. U.S.
defense sources told NBC News on Tuesday that hundreds of such fighters, were
believed to have slipped out of Afghanistan into neighboring Iran and
Pakistan, alarming military officials.
The Taliban’s supreme leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, remains missing
and was believed to have been holed up outside Kandahar, but U.S. officials
told NBC News that almost all of the remaining top 22 Taliban leaders have
escaped into Pakistan. Pakistani authorities, meanwhile, said they had
arrested 20 foreigners trying to slip across the border from Afghanistan, the
Pakistan News Service reported Tuesday.
No further details were available.
U.S. sources also told NBC News that as many as 500 troops of the
Taliban and of al-Qaida, the terrorist network run by bin Laden, had bought
safe passage into Iran after they were captured at Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz
in the north. Most escaped on foot or horseback over remote mountain trails,
while one top leader was wounded and still escaped, sources said.
U.S.: AL-QAIDA STILL DANGEROUS
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters Tuesday that “they
can escape across the borders and regroup and then plot to strike again as
they have promised to do.”
U.S. troops from the 10th Mountain Division are patrolling the
mountainous areas along the Pakistani border. And Pakistan, a key U.S. ally,
said it had sent 4,000 troops to the area.
In southern Afghanistan, U.S. Marine “hunter-killer” teams with armed
vehicles set up a staging ground about 12 miles from Kandahar to cut off
escape routes, and UH-1 Huey command-and-control and AH-1 Cobra attack
helicopters were patrolling the air.
“We continue to conduct interdiction efforts to halt their fleeing and
try to seal off as much as possible and as many as possible potential avenues
for their escape,” Myers said Tuesday.
It remained unknown whether bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept.
11 attacks in the United States, was anywhere near the fighting or had fled
the region.
“I don’t know if he is dead or alive. Tomorrow we may know,” Zaman
said.
SOME CAVES SEARCHED
See the latest images of America at war.
Tribal fighters overran al-Qaida positions Tuesday in the Milawa and
Tora Bora valleys amid barrages of small arms fire from al-Qaida fighters.
What they found included a sniper nest on top of a ridge containing
three dead al-Qaida fighters, their bodies shredded by machine gun fire.
Outside an al-Qaida gun training center, paper targets from the National
Rifle Association littered the ground, complete with names and scores written
in Arabic.
Inside caves, ammunition lay scattered on the ground, and posters of
Palestinian militants adorned some of the walls. A bloody white cloth, a
syringe and a bag of intravenous fluids indicated that one cave, at an
altitude of 10,000 feet, had housed wounded fighters. Arabic-English and
Arabic-Chinese textbooks were found in another cave.
Afghan tribal fighters ventured into the cave mouths as far as
daylight carried, shouting for anyone still inside to surrender. There was no
reply.
Most of the caves were small, extending perhaps 30 to 40 feet into the
mountainside, with some entrances as large as a door and others just big
enough to crawl through.
Hundreds of other caves have yet to be searched, and they still could
harbor al-Qaida fighters.
‘DAISY-CUTTER’ DROPPED
The Afghan assault came after intense U.S. bombing, including a
15,000-pound BLU-82 “daisy cutter” bomb that was dropped Sunday on an
al-Qaida position.
Myers said Tuesday that the bomb “had the desired effect … to kill
al-Qaida.” U.S. troops who inspected the damage saw dead fighters, he added,
but it was not known if any fighters were al-Qaida leaders.
The BLU-82, the biggest bomb in the U.S. arsenal of conventional
weapons, is designed to kill anyone in a 600-yard radius, leaving a
distinctive daisy-shaped blast area.
A mountaintop overlooking Tuesday’s battle had been flattened and
scorched, possibly by the daisy cutter. Trees were reduced to ashes, and the
ground was littered with shrapnel.
Taliban prisoners said dozens of peers died of asphyxiation inside
shipping containers after surrendering to Northern Alliance forces, The New
York Times reported Tuesday. The deaths occurred while the prisoners were
being transported in the containers from Kunduz to a prison in Shibarghan,
Afghanistan, the newspaper said. The Red Cross said it was investigating.
U.S. Marines are building a prisoner-of-war camp at their desert base in
Afghanistan. So far, the Marines have just one prisoner at the camp —
American John Walker, who was captured fighting alongside al-Qaida Taliban
troops.
The Marines were also seizing any weapons found on fleeing Taliban soldiers
and al-Qaida fighters at checkpoints in southern Afghanistan. Marines have
started to “collect weapons and destroy them after we have serialized them,”
Capt. David Romley, a Marine spokesman, told reporters.
The Marines have to determine whether an armed Afghan is an enemy, an
ally or just a shepherd who might have a gun for protection. “It’s largely
based on your judgment and experience as the situation presents itself,”
Romley said. “There is definitely a learning curve.”
NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski, MSNBC.com’s Jonathan Dube and Miguel Llanos,
The Associated Press, Reuters and media pool reports from Afghanistan
contributed to this report.
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