Title: British Fortify Pakistani Border
Author: Mary Beth Sheridan
Publication: Washington Post
Date: May 29, 2002
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30149-2002May29.html

KABUL, Afghanistan, May 29 -- Hundreds of British troops have been dispatched to an area near the Pakistani border to prevent fugitive al Qaeda and Taliban fighters from slipping back into Afghanistan, a rising concern as this country prepares to select its next leader, authorities said today.

The new deployment, dubbed Operation Buzzard, also comes as indications have grown that Pakistan might shift troops away from its border with Afghanistan because of tensions with India. U.S. authorities fear that such a move could weaken the campaign against terrorism on the strategic frontier.

Officials with the U.S.-led military coalition at Bagram air base said today that about 300 British marines have been moved to the area around Khost, a city near Afghanistan's eastern border that has been a focus of the hunt for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

The mission, disclosed two days after it began, differs from previous British operations by focusing on urban as well as rural areas. It will also employ smaller teams of soldiers who will patrol on foot, in vehicles and in helicopters, military officials said.

"We are going in for a longer duration" of several weeks, said a British military spokesman, Lt. Col. Ben Curry. "The key point is being unpredictable. We'll be operating . . . sometimes covertly, sometimes overtly, introducing doubt into the minds of al Qaeda and the Taliban."

Curry said the operation wasn't launched specifically because of the national council, or loya jirga, which opens June 10 to choose Afghanistan's next government. He said, however, that was "a consideration."

Coalition and international peacekeeping officials say that terrorists could try to destabilize the crucial meeting by launching attacks such as suicide or car bombings. The council is to select a new government for an 18-month transition period until elections are held.

"Clearly anything that we can do to prevent any form of disruption that al Qaeda or the Taliban may try to cause [to the loya jirga] is a good thing," Curry said.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are believed by the U.S. military to have fled into Pakistan in search of shelter in areas dominated by tribes closely linked to clans in Afghanistan.

The Afghan minister of border affairs, Amanullah Zadran, said in an interview today that al Qaeda members had escaped into Pakistan on clandestine paths near Khost carved out by Afghan rebels in the 1980s during the U.S.-backed war against Soviet occupation.

Zadran said some of the al Qaeda members were broadcasting propaganda back into Afghanistan from a mobile radio set up about a mile inside Pakistan, in tribal areas along the Afghan border.

"Every morning we listen to it," said Zadran, whose clan is highly influential in the Khost region and has supplied troops to help the U.S.-led military effort in the area. He said al Qaeda forces were also spreading leaflets in the Khost area, "trying to intimidate people."

The propaganda, he said, labeled members of the interim Afghan government as puppets of Western powers and as drunkards -- the latter being a particularly serious charge in this conservative Islamic region.

Coalition forces appear eager to counter the al Qaeda message.

The British military commander, Brig. Roger Lane, gave an address today on Afghan radio about Operation Buzzard, which was translated into Pashto and Dari, two Afghan languages.

"We have no strategic self-interest in staying here in Afghanistan. We are here because al Qaeda harbored terrorists who killed 3,000 people in New York on September 11," Lane said. "We will search mountains and other areas to make sure that terrorists have no safe haven."

Operation Buzzard is intended to complement other efforts by coalition and Afghan troops to locate pockets of al Qaeda and Taliban militia along the border. Zadran, the border official, said 1,100 Afghan fighters based around Khost airport were also participating in the hunt.

"They're under the command of American and British forces" who provide salaries and uniforms, Zadran said. "If there are reports al Qaeda is in specific places, they're deployed."

© 2002 The Washington Post Company