The Associated Press
Abdul Jabbar from the village Choker Karaiz, Afghanistan, looks at the 19 graves of his four children Thursday. Villagers say the children were killed along with 52 other civilians during the American bombing campaign in late October. Survivors say there was no reason to attack their village and are seeking compensation.

Operation Anaconda fails to snare leaders

LOS ANGELES TIMES

BAGRAM, Afghanistan -- The U.S.-led Operation Anaconda has failed to yield any top al-Qaida leaders, and an American commander said Thursday that the network's upper echelon may not have been in the Shah-e-Kot valley when the battle began.

Even without achieving its ultimate goal -- the capture of Osama bin Laden -- the biggest U.S.-led ground assault since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, officials say, has removed "hundreds" from the rolls of international terrorist organizations.

Many those killed in Operation Anaconda were fighters from Chechnya, Uzbekistan and even China, said Maj. General Frank L. Hagenbeck, commander of the coalition waging the battle in eastern Afghanistan.

He added that he believes few of the estimated 1,000 cadres who fought in the valley about 100 miles south of this former Soviet air base have escaped the U.S.-led dragnet, which has become a cave-by-cave search for al-Qaida soldiers believed to be holed up there.

"To this point, we do know that we've killed some second- and third-tier al-Qaida leadership," Hagenbeck said. "The big names that you and I are most familiar with, however, indications are that they were not in this valley as we came here."

Hagenbeck later clarified that he has no "actionable intelligence" on bin Laden's whereabouts and wouldn't specify whether he believes the al-Qaida leader remains in Afghanistan.

Hagenbeck's statements came amid reports from Afghan forces that al-Qaida fighters fled en masse through U.S. positions and that few bodies of enemy forces are evident on the battlefield.

Even the holdouts' commander, Saifur Rahman Mansour, and his three brothers apparently remain at large.

U.S. military leaders are convinced that few enemies escaped.

But that wasn't the view of some of Afghan allies, who doubt that the number of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters killed could be as high as U.S. claims.

Commander Amrullah, an officer just back from Shah-e-Kot on Thursday and preparing to head back with his troops to Kabul, the capital, said he had compared notes with fellow commanders in Gen. Gul Hydar's force during a late-night meeting Wednesday. The consensus was that there were fewer than 100 bodies strewn around the valley, he said.

Many more people had escaped, he said: "Probably 500 to 600, or maybe 1,000, might have got away through the narrow pathways to Pakistan."

For related stories go to the Terror in America section.

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