TIME: On al-Qaeda's
Western Flank
Saturday, March 09, 2002
By MICHAEL WARE / NEAR MANDZHAVAR
In a small stretch of pine trees at Dara, a village
near Gardez, Special Forces and Afghan allies hunker
down on a frontline. Al-Qaeda's forward positions lie
across a few hundred feet of rocky ground, in the
first of the mountains of Shah-I-Kot. The sky is
filled with light snow and the drone of U.S. strike
aircraft pounding the white capped peaks above.
Occasionally, the jagged walls of rock rumble with
explosions, and belch plumes of black smoke. Within
hours the ground attack will recommence. Led by U.S.
soldiers, these bedraggled Afghan fighting men in
dirty shalwar kameez, vests, sandals, camouflage
jackets and pukul will step out from their cover and
charge the terrorists' bunkers, praying the
bombardment has softened the waiting defenses. "This
is 100 per cent danger," says a mujahid nursing his
Kalishnikov. "But I'm not afraid," he adds,
unconvincingly.
Even getting this far has not been easy. The U.S. and
allied forces had run a hellish gauntlet over a boggy
road coursing over gully beds and stony plains to
this front near Mendzhavar. A mere 20 minutes from
the center of Gardez, the surrounding villages belong
to the enemy. "Everyone here is al Qaeda," says a
nervous Afghan soldier pointing out houses from where
a U.S.-Afghan column was ambushed last week. "We
aren't safe passing through because we can't say
which homes they're in and which ones they aren't."
That column had been moving south at around 2am in
the first days of Operation Anaconda, when a brightly
colored truck carrying Afghan soldiers was hit by al
Qaeda's heavy weapons. It now lies on its side in a
ditch, not far from the mud-brick structure to the
east where the trap had been laid. Calling in close
air support, the coalition troops had pummeled the
building and pushed the enemy back. But the al Qaeda
fighters regrouped at a high walled compound further
down the road and off to the west. Again they
unleashed heavy weapons fire; once more they were
repelled. "When we'd finished all the Arabs were
dead," says another mujahid who had been in the
convoy that morning. But even this miserable ground
had come at a price; a handful of government soldiers
were killed and, according to the mujahid, so was one
American. "He died right here," he says standing in a
dip in the road.
Harried from the rear even as they advance, it's no
wonder progress here has been so slow. "We've had to
set up additional checkpoints in the past 24 hours to
cut supply and escape lines to protect the Americans'
backs," an Afghan commander told Time on Friday.
The troops at Dara have been sent to wipe away
al-Qaeda's western defenses and sweep over the
mountains into Shah-i-Kot. At the same time the 101st
Airborne is pressing down from the north, while the
enemy's retreat is blocked by the 10th Mountain
Platoon and Special Forces to the east and south. But
near Dara the bombs are still falling on the near
side of the mountains, meaning the Afghan combat
group here still has some way to go. "My next
rotation to the front is in three days and I'll be up
there for about 24 hours, even after that I'm not
sure we will have reached Shah-i-Kot," says a junior
Afghan commander. He says the firefights have been so
intense "the rounds are thick in the air like rain —
it's as if there's bullets hitting bullets."
Elsewhere, hundreds of Northern Alliance
reinforcements sent from Kabul arrived in Gardez on
Saturday afternoon. That raised murmur of discontent
in the local Pashtun garrisons, because the
reinforcements are Tajik fighters from the Pansjir
Valley — longtime rivals of the Pashtun in
Afghanistan's complex tribal wars. One of the
uniformed government infantrymen told Time they've
been brought in to add punch to the Afghans' western
assault.
"We're going forward slowly, cave by cave," says a
local Afghan commander. "When we capture as little as
30 feet at one go, or as much as 200 feet, we have to
look ahead of us closely and sweep the way clear
always wondering, where's our enemy?" Air support
often proves decisive. "These massive bombs are
dropped and when we advance again the tunnel mouths
are sealed and they can't shell us anymore," says one
soldier. Success is coming one rock at a time. Says
one weary Afghan soldier riding a truck back to
Gardez, "They are fighting to the death, it's what
they want."