Troops keep up hunt for al-Qaida

By Karl Vick

The Washington Post

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — About 200 U.S. Marines moved across a portion of southern Afghanistan early Tuesday on the trail of al-Qaida intelligence, armed enemy holdouts and information about former Taliban leaders, Marine and Afghan officials said.

In the most conspicuous deployment, a Marine column made up of about 20 armored personnel carriers, Humvees and trucks ferried about 200 U.S. fighters through Kandahar in the dead of night toward neighboring Helmand province, a refuge for thousands of Taliban holdouts.

With Harrier fighter jets roaring overhead and helicopter gunships providing additional cover, the convoy approached a sprawling compound believed to hold documents and other possible intelligence on al-Qaida, the terrorist network headed by Osama bin Laden that is blamed for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the officials said.

They searched for documents, booklets, videotapes and other material. Military planners feared that Taliban or al-Qaida fighters might be at the walled compound, the precise location of which officials declined to describe while the operation continued. But allied Afghan militiamen who first approached the 14 buildings within the complex encountered no resistance, and Marine officials said the robust U.S. force conducted a thorough search of the premises without firing a shot.

"Based on what we found when we got there we probably had five times more force than we needed," said Col. Andrew Frick, commanding officer of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, based at the Kandahar International Airport here.

The Marines carried out the search operation because the complex was too large to be safely probed by the relatively small U.S. special forces units that have been scouring potential intelligence sites, Frick said. The Marines were expected to return to the base before dawn today, the colonel said, adding that it was too early to know whether intelligence of value was gathered.

At the airport, Marine public affairs officers were irate that media reports on Monday evening described Marines with battle gear preparing to board Sea Knight helicopters, which photojournalists saw taking off with U.S. troops in the direction of Helmand province at dusk.

The Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, has been widely reported as having fled to the village of Baghran in Helmand’s northern reaches after Kandahar fell to U.S. backed militias on Dec. 7.

Some confusion about the goals and mission of U.S. forces lingered Tuesday. In Kandahar, Marine officers emphasized that the twin-rotor troop transports which departed Kandahar Monday carried no Marines, but refused to say what forces were aboard and where they were headed. The airport also houses a large, multinational special operations force, as well as civilian intelligence agencies and FBI agents on hand to interrogate al-Qaida prisoners housed in a sheet metal detention center.

Rear Adm. Craig Quigley, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, said that the overland intelligence mission was aimed in part at finding "clues as to the whereabouts of Taliban leadership." But he said the mission was in no way intended as a search for Omar. "If we come across him, we’re not going to turn him down," Quigley said. "But this is not the purpose of the trip."

Other Pentagon officials suggested preparations were under way for such a mission. Lowell noted that the presence of the Marines in the area meant such a mission could be undertaken swiftly if it were ordered by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the war in Afghanistan.

"The Marines are trained to accomplish that type of mission," Lowell said.

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