Kabul | Monday
AFGHAN officials were confident on Sunday of capturing the elusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, as US bombers pounded hills near the eastern city of Jalalabad in a bid to wipe out al-Qaeda stragglers.
US forces questioned Abdul Salam Zaeef, the toppled Taliban regime’s former ambassador to Pakistan, for information on Taliban leaders, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the Saudi-born militant’s network of Muslim extremists, officials said.
But the crash of a small plane into an office building in Florida by a 15-year-old who expressed support for bin Laden reminded US officials the al-Qaeda chief has not been abandoned by his legion of supporters.
Waves of US bombers struck the White Mountains south of Jalalabad overnight, continuing their campaign against suspected al-Qaeda positions, the Afghan Islamic Press reported on Sunday.
The raids came amid suspicions that al-Qaeda forces are still hiding in the hills of Tora Bora, bin Laden’s last known hideout, where US troops and Afghan militia comb a warren of caves and tunnels.
A group of tribal elders from Paktia province, just south of the White Mountains, arrived in Kabul for talks with interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai to seek an end to the US air strikes.
“We are tired of the bombings,” said their leader, Eid Mohammad.
“Too many innocent people are being killed.”
In the latest incident linked to the US onslaught, Mohammad said, “around 30” villagers were killed near the town of Khost. In a December 30 incident, as many as 100 civilians died in a raid on an ammunition dump just north of Gardez, the provincial capital, an Afghan minister said.
Foreign ministry representative Omar Samad said on Saturday that civilian casualties were unfortunate, but “part of the war effort against terrorism.”
The Taliban supreme leader eluded 5 000 Afghan troops poised last week to flush him out of his hideout near Baghran, in Helmand province east of Kandahar, during negotiations for his surrender.
In an interview with NBC news, Karzai said forces loyal to the Afghan government continued to search the area for Omar, who he called a “criminal.”
“Well, if we find him, we will arrest him, today, tomorrow, whenever,” he said, adding he would stick to his pledge to hand the leader over to the United States once he is caught.
Samad vowed that Omar, wanted by the United States for harbouring bin Laden, the chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, would be “captured dead or alive.”
Kandahar intelligence official Nasratullah Nasrat said: “We know where he is, but I cannot tell you anything more.”
The United States hopes Zaeef, the most visible Taliban representative until Pakistan stopped recognising the regime after the November 13 fall of Kabul, will provide clues to bin Laden’s whereabouts.
As possibly the most senior Taliban official in US custody, Zaeef is under interrogation aboard the USS Bataan, in the Arabian Sea.
Meanwhile, Americans were puzzled by revelations that the young pilot who deliberately crashed his plane into a Tampa, Florida, office building on Saturday expressed “sympathy” for bin Laden in a note found in the wreckage of the Cessna plane.
According to the note found in Charles Bishop’s pocket, which Tampa Police Chief Bennie Holder characterized as a suicide note, the pilot “clearly stated he had acted alone without any help from anyone else.”
“He expressed sympathy toward Osama bin Laden and the events of 9-11,” the police chief told reporters. “He was a troubled young man.”
No other people were killed in the incident, but the Bank of American building sustained damage.
On Sunday, the Pentagon said reinforcements were en route to the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to prepare it to hold up to 2 000 al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.
“Approximately 1 000 personnel from various military installations will begin to deploy today to Guantanamo,” said Lieutenant Colonel Dan Stoneking, a Pentagon representative.
Around 1 500 troops will eventually reinforce US personnel stationed at the 49 square-kilometre base long located in southeastern Cuba against Havana’s will.
The high-security facility currently cannot accommodate more than 100 prisoners but that capacity “is expected to increase to as many as 2 000 maximum security detainees,” Stoneking said.
Analysts said Guantanamo is an ideal place for US military authorities to house the prisoners, as it is convenient to the US mainland but beyond the reach of the US legal system and journalists.
There are currently 307 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in US custody in Afghanistan, the Pentagon said.
In Yemen, where authorities also hunt al-Qaeda members, tribal chiefs and provincial dignitaries on Sunday pledged support for the government’s anti-terrorism drive.
Ten tribal representatives from Marib and Shabwa, east of Sanaa, as well as Al-Juf, northeast of the capital, sent a message to President Ali Abdullah Saleh voicing “support for the policy being carried out against violence and terrorism,” according to a statement.
Sanaa is cracking down on outlaws and suspected al-Qaeda members in the three provinces which border Saudi Arabia, apparently in the hope of avoiding a US strike in a future phase of Washington’s war on terror.
On December 18, a fierce battle erupted in Marib between tribesmen and Yemeni security forces combing the area in search of suspected al-Qaeda members.
Bin Laden, whose family is from Yemen, has found support among Islamist elements there.
In Kathmandu, at the end of a seven-nation south Asian summit, the leaders of India and Pakistan had brief, but apparently fruitless one-on-one talks amid simmering bilateral tensions – an offshoot of the Afghan campaign.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had “a bilateral chat” of 10 to 15 minutes after the summit officially ended, Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga said. – AFP