Taliban still a lethal force

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The tighter the U.S. military and Afghan allies cinch the noose around supporters of Osama bin Laden, the greater the danger of American troops getting killed, the Pentagon chief said Friday.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld portrayed the Taliban militia and al-Qaida fighters as giving ground, being backed into a corner and creating confusion even as many surrender or change sides.

“Let there be no doubt, there will be further casualties in this campaign, in Afghanistan and elsewhere,” Rumsfeld said on the 55th day of the U.S. aerial assault, which has punished but not finished off the Taliban.

There are still pockets of resistance elsewhere in Afghanistan, and Rumsfeld said thousands of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters are being held prisoner by Northern Alliance and other opposition forces. It is difficult to determine who among the prisoners are Taliban or al-Qaida leaders without questioning them directly – a situation that exposes the interrogators to danger, he said.

“They are people who, for the most part, don’t walk up and volunteer their names and identification numbers with a sample of DNA,” Rumsfeld said. “What they do is, they blend into the other prisoners.”

This was the situation last weekend when CIA officer Johnny “Mike” Spann was killed while interrogating enemy prisoners in Mazar-e-Sharif, a northern city under the control of the Northern Alliance, Rumsfeld said. He praised Spann as a hero who knew the risks he faced.

Rumsfeld said the Taliban and al-Qaida are still dangerous, even as their hold on Afghanistan crumbles.

“The Taliban can no longer freely move around the country; they’re finding it increasingly difficult to manage their remaining forces,” Rumsfeld said. “Ironically, however, as the size of the Taliban real estate diminishes, the danger to coalition forces may actually be increasing.”

That is largely because shifting allegiances and growing chaos make it hard to distinguish friend from foe.

“There are plenty of Taliban people who ‘defected,’ quote/unquote, and may or may not stay defected. There are plenty of people who just melted into the cities and into the mountains that are still there and they’re still armed,” Rumsfeld said.

The danger to Americans would grow if Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, decides he must send ground forces on a cave-by-cave manhunt for bin Laden. For now, Franks is hoping that Afghans motivated by $25 million in U.S. reward money will provide enough information to enable U.S. bombs to get bin Laden.

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

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