[R-G] Operation Anaconda leaves a bitter legacy - LAT

[shniad at sfu.ca]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-000026559apr14.story

The Los Angeles Times				      April 14, 2002

Operation Anaconda leaves a bitter legacy

     Afghanistan: Many residents of war-torn land blame U.S.

     By David Zucchino

Gardez, Afghanistan -- Every morning, a forlorn procession of the bereft and
the defeated gathers at the gates of the pale yellow governor's compound in
this weather-beaten provincial outpost.

There are widows and orphans and stooped old men, all of them bearing tales
of misery and loss written in flowing Persian script on slips of paper.
These are sullen, bitter people.

"They are so angry, angry at the Americans," said Gen. Sahib Jan Loodin
Alozai, the deputy governor of Paktia province, who processes the
complaints. "They blame the Americans for all their troubles." Nearly a
month has passed since American-led Operation Anaconda ended here in the
silver-capped mountains of southeastern Afghanistan. Now the Americans are
targets of residual hate and resentment in a province where support for the
Taliban and Al Qaeda remains strong.

Some petitioners claim that American airstrikes killed their relatives.
Others claim that their homes were destroyed by American bombs or missiles.
Farmers complain that American soldiers have blocked access to their fields,
ruining their spring planting season. People on the street glare and curse
at passing American reporters. A Canadian reporter was seriously wounded
last month by a grenade tossed into her vehicle a few miles outside town.

This is Pushtun country. Many people here are hostile to foreigners and
sympathetic to the Pushtun-dominated Taliban. In their view, the Americans
are Christian invaders who installed an interim government in Kabul
dominated by the Pushtuns' ethnic rivals, Tajiks from the north.

In place of routed Taliban fighters, the Americans have helped install
Pushtun commanders and fighters of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance in
and around Gardez. These veterans of Afghan civil wars teamed with the
American-led coalition forces to drive Taliban and Al Qaeda forces from
their redoubt in the Shahi Kot valley, 25 miles southeast of here.

Even with the enemy on the run, the Americans and their Afghan allies are
confronting a wellspring of sympathy for the Taliban that allows the
guerrillas to feed and arm themselves while they regroup. Unsigned leaflets,
known as shabnama, or "night letters," have appeared urging Afghans to kill
or kidnap foreign--especially American--journalists, soldiers or aid
workers.

According to local officials, Taliban and Al Qaeda survivors have withdrawn
to the south and east, into the mountains of neighboring Paktika province.
They say others have retreated across the lawless frontier to the Pakistani
Pushtun tribal area known as Waziristan.

But some are still active in the Shahi Kot valley, according to Capt. Steven
O'Connor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition forces. O'Connor said
rockets were fired several miles from coalition troops on April 3, causing
no casualties but heightening fears of an enemy resurgence. The incident
took place near "the Whale," a large hill in the Shahi Kot valley that was
the site of fierce fighting in early March.

Maj. Tony de Reya, a British intelligence officer, said Taliban and Al Qaeda
fighters are engaged in a "tactical pause." He said there are "large
groupings of Al Qaeda in certain areas of operation," but declined to
elaborate.

Abdul Rahim, a U.S.-backed commander in Gardez, said that while there may be
as many as 900 surviving Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to the south and
east, there are none left in his town.

"The only Al Qaeda and Taliban around here are dead ones," Rahim said over a
steaming lunch of meat and rice inside a command post where AK-47s and
rocket-propelled grenade launchers were stacked along the walls.

Rahim, a wiry little man with a hooked nose and a deep sunburn, said his men
continue to find enemy corpses, weapons, ammunition and training manuals
inside caves in the valley. About 50 caves have been cleared and destroyed
and a handful of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured, he said.

"The bodies and the prisoners, we give to the Americans," Rahim said. "The
weapons and ammunition, we keep."

American and coalition forces are conducting "clearance operations" south
and east of the Shahi Kot valley, Rahim said. Special Forces troops launch
missions from an adobe fortress guarded by Afghan gunmen on the southern
outskirts of Gardez. From time to time, American helicopters swoop low over
the rooftops, headed south in search of signs of the enemy.

But in Gardez, many consider the Americans the enemy. Two incidents, in
particular, have stoked passions here.

On Dec. 20, American warplanes killed 50 to 60 people in a convoy in Paktia.
Survivors said the victims were tribal elders headed to Kabul for the
inauguration of interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai. The Pentagon said the
dead were Taliban who had opened fire on the planes.

On March 6, the Pentagon has acknowledged, women and children were among 14
people killed by an American airstrike on an Al Qaeda convoy fleeing the
Shahi Kot valley. The civilians were Al Qaeda family members traveling with
fighters.

"There were women and children in that convoy," Sayed Aminullah, an Afghan
worker for CARE International in Gardez, said of the March attack. "You
don't drop bombs on them, whatever the reason."

Aminullah said that while he and many others in Gardez are grateful to the
Americans for removing the Taliban, and especially the foreigners of Al
Qaeda, "the killing of innocents has filled everyone with anger."

Local officials claim, variously, that a dozen, 50, or more than 100
civilians were killed by American ordnance during Operation Anaconda.
Alozai, the deputy governor, said he had processed 12 death claims but
anticipates more. Townspeople say the numbers are much higher. With bodies
buried and witnesses dispersed, an accurate total probably will never
emerge.

"Not even the angels know the correct number," Aminullah said.

In Kabul, the Ministry of Martyrs and the Disabled tries to track civilian
war deaths nationwide. But the agency's deputy minister, Baz Mohammed
Zormati, said the Gardez region has not been surveyed because his employees
are afraid to travel there.

Zormati, a Pushtun from Zormat, just south of Gardez, said he, too, refuses
to go to Gardez. He supported the North Alliance, he said, and a bounty was
put on his head by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who remains at
large.

"If I went," he said, "maybe I would not return alive."

Both the deputy governor and another local CARE official, Mohammed Rahim,
say the homes of 200 to 300 people from 50 to 60 families were destroyed by
American warplanes. Most of those homes were being used as military posts by
Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who had evicted villagers in the Shahi Kot
valley, they said.

The families have besieged the governor's office with demands for American
compensation, Alozai said. He said he relayed their complaints to "Mister
Mike," his American military contact in Gardez, but received no reply.
American officials say the State Department and Pentagon are studying the
issue but have reached no decision.

Alozai, a Pushtun who took office six weeks ago, said the Americans did not
consult local officials before launching Operation Anaconda.

If they had, he said, they might have negotiated a Taliban and Al Qaeda
surrender, although U.S. commanders have said the enemy refused to surrender
even when trapped or wounded. And several months earlier, Taliban and Al
Qaeda fighters apparently slipped away while negotiations on a surrender
were underway farther north in Tora Bora.

"The Americans didn't show respect for our customs, and that has left a
bitter taste," Alozai said. The experience stirred his memories of the
Russian misadventure in Afghanistan, he said.

"You know, the people in Gardez need foreigners to hate," Alozai said. "They
used to hate the Russians. Now they hate the Americans."

He looked up from his tea at an American reporter seated in his drawing
room. "Actually," he said, "you should not be here. I cannot guarantee your
safety."

Even Rahim, the commander, said he was not entirely satisfied with the
conduct of his American patrons.

Yes, he said, he had good relations with his American liaison officer,
"Commander Brent." And, yes, he fought alongside the Americans at Shahi Kot,
and 130 of his 600 fighters are being trained by the Americans, he said.

But still, he said, it pains him that American warplanes killed civilians
when they attacked a Taliban munitions depot in the settlement of Qalaye
Niazy near Gardez on Dec. 29. Rahim claimed that 100 civilians living nearby
were killed along with enemy fighters, but he offered no proof.

"The Americans never said they were sorry, or that they made a mistake,"
Rahim said. "They just said every dead person was Taliban or Al Qaeda."

He shook his head vigorously. "This is my area. I know the people. I know
who's Taliban and who's Al Qaeda. These were just ordinary people."

An American reporter was escorted to the site, down a rocky dirt track
northwest of Gardez, by one of Rahim's soldiers, a pimply-faced young man
with an automatic rifle slung across his back. After complaining that his
commander had yet to pay him a single afghani in salary, the soldier,
Shaneef Shah, 22, led the way to a settlement of five flattened mud
compounds.

Beside the ruins, nomads known as Kochis had pitched their tents. Women in
red and crimson robes squatted in the dirt, their camels tethered to stakes.


The largest compound had been the home of a Kochi who had served as a
Taliban commander, Shah said. He had gathered weapons and ammunition
abandoned by fellow Taliban during their retreat from Gardez and trucked
them to his compound.

When American warplanes flattened the depot in a series of strikes Dec. 29,
Shah said, the commander and several Taliban were killed, but so were
civilians in nearby homes. Shah said local Kochis estimated the number of
dead at 50, as did a recent U.N. report.

Nearby, 16 graves had recently been dug, their white mourning flags whipping
in the fierce desert wind. Shah said other victims had been taken elsewhere
and buried.

Some of the ammunition had survived the air strike. There were footlockers
stuffed with new anti-tank rockets, still wrapped in protective plastic
sleeves. There were hundreds of gray ammunition boxes packed with well-oiled
anti-aircraft rounds.

Asked why his commanders had not gathered the ammunition for their own use,
Shah replied. "Because it's sitting in the middle of a mine field."

Shah suddenly grew anxious, but not because of mines. He said he feared
Kochi gunmen would arrive to find an American poking through Kochi homes
that had been bombed by American planes.

"I'm afraid for you," he told the American. "And for me, too."