GIs Hunt al-Qaida in Afghan Mountains

[warpedskydiver 0]

U.S. soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 71st Cavalry Regiment of the New York-based and 10th Mountain... GIs Hunt al-Qaida in Afghan Mountains
Sunday, September 10, 2006 3:55 PM EDT
The Associated Press
By FISNIK ABRASHI

KORANGAL VALLEY, Afghanistan (AP) — At night, the mountains glow from artillery strikes. By day, gunbattles echo down the valley. Five years after the Sept. 11 attack, Americans are battling al-Qaida militants in this remote area where the U.S. military says the group hatched the terror plot.

Only about 100 hard-core Afghan, Arab and Pakistani insurgents operate in the Korangal Valley, but this is where the U.S. last year suffered its worst combat loss in Afghanistan and where the military believes at least second-tier al-Qaida leaders still hide and plan attacks.

Many of the U.S. soldiers here see their offensive as a chance to avenge the assault on America, and to calm a hot bed of the Afghan insurgency.

"From all the areas we have been through, this one is the most active," said Capt. Michael Schmidt of the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, N.Y.

"There are a lot of bad guys in this valley," the 30-year-old Marylander added, his M-16 assault rifle resting in the carved out hole of a bunker overlooking a village where U.S. troops think they killed at least two insurgents Sunday.

At the end of August, the U.S. Army launched Operation Big Northern Wind seeking to wipe out militants in Kunar province's Korangal Valley and expand the control of the Afghan government — part of a drive by 20,000 coalition soldiers to secure the volatile frontier with Pakistan.

The drive comes amid Afghanistan's worst violence since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban regime at the end of 2001 for giving haven to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida training bases.

Near the main southern city of Kandahar, a newly deployed NATO force is waging war on a resurgent Taliban. The alliance said air strikes and artillery killed 94 militants overnight and early Sunday, pushing the reported toll from the 9-day-old offensive past 420 — probably the most intense military confrontation in Afghanistan in nearly five years.

Two U.S.-led coalition soldiers also died in combat in the south late Saturday. Five NATO soldiers and 14 British crew on a reconnaissance plane died there earlier in the week.

Also Sunday, a suicide bombing claimed by the Taliban killed the governor of eastern Paktia province, and the U.S. military warned a suicide bombing cell had set up in Kabul to target foreign troops. A suicide bombing Friday killed 16 people, including two U.S. soldiers, near the U.S. Embassy.

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that the war has been a boon for the world, shutting down al-Qaida camps that had trained thousands of terrorists, unseating the Taliban's puritanical Islamic regime and bringing democracy to the Afghanistan.

But Cheney also cautioned there is a tough road ahead. "We are still in the fight in Afghanistan and we're likely to be for some considerable period of time," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

In the Korangal Valley, the terrain is more rugged than the expansive desert around Kandahar. The U.S. Army is fighting a classic counterinsurgency of the kind last waged during the Vietnam War, said Capt. Robert Stanton, 31, of Tampa, Fla.

Lt. Col. Christopher Cavoli, 42, commander of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, said the aim is to put military pressure on the insurgents and political pressure on their supporters in villages and so extend the reach of the government in Kabul.

But for the troops of the 10th Mountain Division, this is also about punishing al-Qaida for the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The people here that we are fighting are direct descendants or were at some point in time directly involved in terrorist attacks on America," said Stanton. "We were told that Osama bin Laden and his group operated freely up here ... conducted training and planning activity and that this was where the plans for Sept. 11 were hatched."

Stanton would not give further details of the source of the information, but military intelligence officers say these high, pine-covered mountains in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province still are home to headquarters for second- and third-tier al-Qaida leaders.

They say the jetliner bombing plot reportedly foiled last month in London was probably hatched in the Aranas area of Nuristan. Pakistani intelligence officials also have claimed that an al-Qaida mastermind in eastern Afghanistan was behind the conspiracy.

The U.S. military action to snuff out the militants in the east is intense.

There are almost daily firefights with small bands of militants — who blend in quickly with civilians — and deafening barrages of artillery scorch the mountainsides, setting trees on fire.

American mortars and 155 mm howitzers blasted the hilltops Sunday above the village of Darbart after insurgents fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. soldiers searching the hamlet.

Troops traded machine gun fire for nearly an hour with the insurgents, until 120 mm mortar shells hit a house being used as a firing position by at least two militants. The two were presumed killed. No U.S. soldiers were hurt.

"The enemy up here is very well trained," Stanton said. "They are very, very hard to find because most of them have support from some of the locals."

The district governor has slapped sanctions on the southern section of the valley, where most of the militants are believed to come from and where foreign fighters linked to al-Qaida find sanctuary in caves, mountains huts and a dozen or so villages.

The military says the local Korangali tribe is a key link to al-Qaida and other Islamic militants operating here. The tribe adheres to the austere Wahhabi brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia and practiced by the fugitive bin Laden and the Taliban.

The sanctions bar goods from entering or leaving the valley in hopes that will coerce the Korangali village elders into forcing the militants out or turn people against the elders.

Among the most-wanted men are three Afghans, Haji Matin, Habib Jan and Ahmed Shah.

Shah is alleged to have used a rocket-propelled grenade to shoot down a U.S. helicopter in June 2005, killing 16 Americans in the deadliest single attack on the U.S. military since the war began.

Those troops were part of a rescue effort for a four-man team of Navy SEALs caught in a militant ambush. Three SEALs were killed. The fourth was rescued days later by a farmer.

To win local support, the Army is building roads, hospitals, bridges and schools, said Cavoli, the battalion commander.

But fighting is also important to "demonstrate to the people that you can keep them safe from the enemy's coercion — that the government can and will defeat the enemy and keep order," he said.

[akarunway 1]

I am so sick of this 9/11 be scared political BS rhetoric. Political gaming. Why the fuck are they looking for him now. I thought G Dubya didnt care anymore. Maybe afraid of November? My fucking son killed himself last yr. I'm over it. 9/11 is history people. We need a new strategy to make PEACE IN THE FUCKIN WORLD and QUIT ALL THE FUCKIN KILLING. . GODDAMN MACHO FUCKIN KILLIN WARMONGERERS CORPORATE THEIVIN, STEALING ASSHOLES IN POWER. ALL OF EM. rant over[madEdit to add:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901105_pf.html

I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

[Royd 0]

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We need a new strategy to make PEACE IN THE FUCKIN WORLD

I'm sorry about your loss.

Why is your anger directed toward your own people? We are not the ones to make the first move.

I believe that we should treat Islam as a whole as the enemy, unless there is a visible, and serious housecleaning on their part.
Or else, we in the west, should completely isolate those people to their region until they realize just how vital we are to their economies.
After all, they say that they want to be left alone.

[wmw999 2,589]

Should we "ship back" the ones who live in all of the other countries in the world? Maybe administer a little test first, or just make them wear a green crescent on their clothing at all times?

"They" are only the whole problem if we see "our" viewpoint as the only valid one.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[rushmc 23]

They want to kill us because we do not believe as they do. It can not be more simple.

If we do not stop/kill them, they will kill us!

Tolerance from us (US) is not the issue.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[wmw999 2,589]

Who is "they?" Is it all Muslims? Is it "islamofascits" (whatever that means in a rigorous definition)? Is it poor people? People in the Middle East? Non-Christians?

If you focus on the differences among people, it's easy to "see where the problems are". However, by focusing on the differences, you fail to see the commonalities (which are greater), and make their motivations too simple.

If we're complicated, people in the Middle East are too. We make the situation far more dangerous by oversimplifying. There's a time for simplification. Soldiers, and other people who are acting in realtime situations have to simplify. But analysts, and the fighting 101'st keyboarders, should take the time to consider a number of scenarios, motivations, and options.

That way more information is included in the analysis that allows the people who have to react.

Wendy W.

There is nothing more dangerous than breaking a basic safety rule and getting away with it. It removes fear of the consequences and builds false confidence. (tbrown)

[kallend 2,150]

There was a (general or colonel) on the radio yesterday saying they had positively located OBL at one time but couldn't track him because all but one of his unit's Predator UAVs had been sent to Iraq....

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[idrankwhat 0]

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Quote

We need a new strategy to make PEACE IN THE FUCKIN WORLD

I'm sorry about your loss.

Why is your anger directed toward your own people? We are not the ones to make the first move.

Yes we were. Until people realize that people want to kill us because of our foreign policy then we're doomed to continue cultivating enemies. Trying to pin this on some sort of religious based ideology is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to divert the attention away from the actual cause of the problem.

[freeflir29 0]

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Non-Christians?

Yes...........we declare Jihad on all non-believers!




No wait..........that's what "they" did. Ummmm.........maybe a crusade is in order. Yeeessss.............Templar Knights Mount UP!

[rushmc 23]

Until people realize that people want to kill us because of our foreign policy then we're doomed to continue cultivating enemies. Trying to pin this on some sort of religious based ideology is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to divert the attention away from the actual cause of the problem

Quote

IMO this is what you are trying to do here!

Edited to add:

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook, is revealing. "I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours."

In this context, mutual assured destruction, the deterrent that worked so well during the Cold War, would have no meaning. At the end of time, there will be general destruction anyway. What will matter will be the final destination of the dead--hell for the infidels, and heaven for the believers. For people with this mindset, MAD is not a constraint; it is an inducement.

How then can one confront such an enemy, with such a view of life and death? Some immediate precautions are obviously possible and necessary. In the long term, it would seem that the best, perhaps the only hope is to appeal to those Muslims, Iranians, Arabs and others who do not share these apocalyptic perceptions and aspirations, and feel as much threatened, indeed even more threatened, than we are. There must be many such, probably even a majority in the lands of Islam. Now is the time for them to save their countries, their societies and their religion from the madness of MAD.

Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author, most recently, of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (Oxford University Press, 2004).

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

• Quote

[warpedskydiver 0]

Quote

I am so sick of this 9/11 be scared political BS rhetoric. Political gaming. Why the fuck are they looking for him now. I thought G Dubya didnt care anymore. Maybe afraid of November? My fucking son killed himself last yr. I'm over it. 9/11 is history people. We need a new strategy to make PEACE IN THE FUCKIN WORLD and QUIT ALL THE FUCKIN KILLING. . GODDAMN MACHO FUCKIN KILLIN WARMONGERERS CORPORATE THEIVIN, STEALING ASSHOLES IN POWER. ALL OF EM. rant over[madEdit to add:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/09/AR2006090901105_pf.html

In all seriousness and this is not a slam against you by any means, I am no expert here but it seems you need to find a qualified professional to speak to.

Grief can exacerbate all kinds of bad feelings etc.

[StreetScooby 5]

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Yes we were. Until people realize that people want to kill us because of our foreign policy then we're doomed to continue cultivating enemies. Trying to pin this on some sort of religious based ideology is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to divert the attention away from the actual cause of the problem.

You make it sound like we're dealing with rational people. We're not.

We are all engines of karma

[freeflir29 0]

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You make it sound like we're dealing with rational people. We're not.

THANK YOU!

[Skyrad 0]

Sorry to hear about your son.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[idrankwhat 0]

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Quote

Yes we were. Until people realize that people want to kill us because of our foreign policy then we're doomed to continue cultivating enemies. Trying to pin this on some sort of religious based ideology is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to divert the attention away from the actual cause of the problem.

You make it sound like we're dealing with rational people. We're not.

You're right. I hope we can vote in some rational people in Nov. Not likely but I can always hope

[idrankwhat 0]

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Until people realize that people want to kill us because of our foreign policy then we're doomed to continue cultivating enemies. Trying to pin this on some sort of religious based ideology is nothing more than a deliberate attempt to divert the attention away from the actual cause of the problem

Quote

IMO this is what you are trying to do here!

Edited to add:

A passage from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook,

Well if my choices are between "they're pissed at us for years and years of screwing with their lives on their land for our profit" and "they're pissed at us because they want martyrdom" then I'm going to have to vote for the former. If you want some more quotes I can probably dig up some classic Pat Robertson and maybe some tasty James Watt "go ahead and trash the earth because the rapture's coming". Good stuff.

• Quote

[rushmc 23]

If you want some more quotes I can probably dig up some classic Pat Robertson and maybe some tasty James Watt "go ahead and trash the earth because the rapture's coming". Good stuff.

Quote

You think this context is comparable huh?

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

• Quote

[shropshire 0]

Sorry mate.... but that's one of the daftest posts that I've ever read... no offence intended

Suggesting that all people who follow the Muslim faith should be held acountable for ANY wrong doings of SOME of their members, is exactly the same as suggesting that ALL Christians or Americans or Spaniards (pick your own group here) and suggesting that they are ALL guilty unless they stop ALL wrong doings by ANY members of that dispersed group... Come Off It. Lets at least attempt to be rational, please.

.

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[Skyrad 0]

Quote

Quote

We need a new strategy to make PEACE IN THE FUCKIN WORLD

I'm sorry about your loss.

Why is your anger directed toward your own people? We are not the ones to make the first move.

I believe that we should treat Islam as a whole as the enemy, unless there is a visible, and serious housecleaning on their part.
Or else, we in the west, should completely isolate those people to their region until they realize just how vital we are to their economies.
After all, they say that they want to be left alone.

What about patriotic American citizens including those in the US forces who also happen to be Muslims

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[freeflir29 0]

Hey...........he's not any farther off of a sane reality than "idrankwhat."

[idrankwhat 0]

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Hey...........he's not any farther off of a sane reality than "idrankwhat."

Your Templar is showing