Captured prisoners not al-Qaida

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Posted 7:55AM on Wednesday, March 20, 2002

WASHINGTON - It's an example of what has been called the invisible part of the war against terror. American forces swoop down on a suspected al-Qaida or Taliban hide-out, sometimes raiding unoccupied sites, where they collect only intelligence, sometimes taking prisoners. Sometimes the prisoners are nothing more than ordinary Afghans. Prisoners captured in the latest raid on a suspected Afghan terrorist compound turned out to be neither members of the former ruling Taliban militia nor the al-Qaida terror network, military officials said Tuesday. The development highlights difficulties the U.S.-led coalition faces to figure out who's who in a nation where lawlessness is rampant and one-time supporters switched sides after the harsh Taliban governing system fell. It also highlights the difficulty in collecting good intelligence as coalition forces seek out scattered and hiding enemy fighters. Additionally, it is an example of operations rarely talked about openly by the Pentagon. Sunday's raid was made public, but an unknown number of others with similar outcomes have remained secret, defense officials said. After watching and gathering intelligence, American forces detained 31 suspected al-Qaida or Taliban fighters Sunday in what they called a military compound near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. ``We continue to screen them to determine exactly who they are,'' Maj. Ralph Mills, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, said Tuesday night. Two other defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that upon interrogating the detainees, Americans found they were not wanted by the United States in its campaign to root terrorists out of Afghanistan. They said the men would be released, but it was unclear exactly when. Officials have given very few details about the operation except to say U.S. forces went into the compound some 40 miles west of Kandahar and detained the 31. The capture came as coalition forces were winding down Operation Anaconda, a 2,000-troop assault to kill or capture al-Qaida and Taliban fighters believed regrouping in eastern Afghanistan. ``Over the last two weeks most of the focus has been in and around Anaconda ..., our largest offensive,'' Brig. Gen. John Rosa Jr. told reporters Monday. ``But we continue to surveil. We continued our intelligence efforts all through the country,'' he said. ``It's ongoing, and the key indicators made us believe that we needed to go into that compound.'' Before Anaconda, the last known ground operation was on Jan. 23, when U.S. special forces raided a compound where the United States mistakenly believed enemy figures were holed up. The Pentagon has said 16 people who turned out not to be to al-Qaida or Taliban were killed when they resisted and another 27 captured were later released to Afghan authorities. Smaller, undisclosed raids took place before and after the Jan. 23 raid, officials have said privately. Those raids concentrated on gathering information about pockets of resistance and at times netted documents or individuals who were interrogated or then released, officials said. On Sunday, a team of Army Special Forces soldiers attacked a convoy that American intelligence had been watching, three vehicles traveling about 45 miles southwest of the city of Gardez. Sixteen people in the convoy were killed, and the military said they were believed to be al-Qaida fighters. One man was detained, officials said. Although Anaconda was the largest U.S. ground operation in the war, it is not expected to be the last. Pockets of resistance elsewhere in Afghanistan are being watched, and commanders plan to go after them. On Wednesday, gunmen attacked U.S. coalition forces in eastern Afghanistan, touching off a firefight that lasted several hours, a U.S. military spokesman said. One U.S. soldier with the 101st Airborne Division was shot in the arm during the attack in the city of Khost, which is on the southeastern end of the valley where Operation Anaconda was staged.