Afghan workers repair Jalalabad airport for U.S. planes

By Chris Tomlinson

Associated Press

JALALABAD, Afghanistan – Workers facing a 72-hour deadline scrambled Tuesday to repair Jalalabad airport for U.S. aircraft as local anti-Taliban commanders shuttled troops to nearby mountains for an assault on caves believed hiding Osama bin Laden.

U.S. jets pounded targets in the White Mountains about 45 miles south of Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan. President Bush launched military operations against Afghanistan Oct. 7 after Taliban rulers refused to turn over bin Laden for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

Anti-Taliban officials said the United States had asked them to repair the runway – which the Americans bombed – so that fixed wing aircraft could begin landing by Thursday.

“The Americans told our engineer that they want the runway repaired and cleared within 72 hours,” said Zameer Alam, while overseeing workers filling in a crater left by U.S. bombs in early October.

Afghan guards said U.S. helicopters have flown here for the last three nights, unloading boxes for fighters loyal to Hazrat Ali, the provincial security chief. They did not know what was in the boxes.

Meanwhile, anti-Taliban commanders began shuttling hundreds of troops to the foothills Tuesday in preparation for what they say will be an assault on Tora Bora and other known hide-outs of bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.

“Practically, we must start the war against these people,” senior provincial official Mohammed Zaman said. He said attempts to negotiate a surrender had failed and that force was the only option.

Zaman said his fighters would first cut off sources of water for the hideouts. “Without water, life is very difficult,” he said. “Then we will attack.”

Both Ali and Pentagon officials have said about 20 U.S. special operations troops are on the ground here in Nangarhar province to search for bin Laden and his men.

U.S. officials say the special forces are working with local Afghans to collect information.

A top Pentagon official, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, said Monday that U.S. special forces are not conducting a cave-to-cave search for bin Laden, but rather helping to locate bombing targets.

“This is an area that is pretty well-known” to U.S. military planners as “an area where Taliban and al-Qaida forces have been and in numbers,” he said.

Ali said Monday he had sent a delegation of elders from Jalalabad to negotiate the surrender of non-Afghan fighters hiding in the mountains. Another group of elders, claiming to represent the fighters, brought back a response – reputedly from bin Laden, he said.

“They gave a message to our elders from Osama bin Laden: ‘I don’t want to fight the (Muslim forces), but if I find some foreign troops, I must fight them,’ ” Ali said.

He could not vouch for the veracity of the elders’ claim to represent bin Laden.

Backed by a resolution from the Eastern Shura, or council, which controls the Jalalabad area, Ali said he had 1,500 men ready to enter the White Mountains to drive out the non-Afghans – primarily Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks – who have been fighting with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

“That is our aim, to fight the terrorists in that area. It is the last and strongest al-Qaida base left in our country,” Ali said. He said the assault could begin in the next few days.

For weeks, rumors of bin Laden’s presence in the White Mountains, specifically at the former anti-Soviet guerrilla cave complex at Tora Bora, have spread throughout eastern Afghanistan.

Anti-Taliban leaders have said they believe bin Laden is at Tora Bora or another cave complex known as Mawal, 70 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Jalalabad.

Former Taliban members and northern alliance leaders in Kabul, however, believe bin Laden is in the southern city of Kandahar, preparing a last stand with the only remaining Taliban force of consequence.

Tora Bora is a well-known cave complex built in the 1980s with U.S. funding as a headquarters for guerrillas resisting the decade of Soviet occupation. Ali, who fought the Soviets from Tora Bora, described it as an impregnable fortress.

Copyright ©2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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