For Taliban, many losses to count

"He is vulnerable as a foreigner among Afghans," says a former US Special Forces officer who requested anonymity. "If bin Laden were Afghan, he would be almost bulletproof. We are slowly, slowly getting better intelligence."

And there are other signs on the ground of what the Taliban and bin Laden have lost in the fight. One is at the sprawling military base of Rishkhor, 10 miles south of Kabul, which was hit repeatedly by US bombs. Virtually untouched by the US bombing in an adjoining valley, however, are dozens of reinforced concrete-bunker ammunition depots. Thousands of mortars and heavy artillery of every size, rockets and countless bullets fill the depots, and are now in alliance hands.

"It's a huge loss; it was the main secured place for the Taliban, where they kept all their ammunition," says alliance commander Ayoub Salangi. "Now they are only trying to keep themselves alive. They don't care about the damage - they just move."

Perhaps just as damaging to Al Qaeda is the amount of documentation left in training camps and safe houses, which were hurriedly abandoned when Kabul fell on Nov. 12.

Documents retrieved from the Al Qaeda training headquarters at Khost, a series of camps 95 miles southeast of Kabul, underscore the losses.

Stacks of documents there - discovered by a British correspondent for The Observer (London) newspaper, the first known Westerner to have visited the spot for years - reveal a concerted effort to instruct militants in every aspect of terrorism. English language files seen by the Monitor - many apparently from far-right US antigovernment groups - describe everything from making car bombs to converting a shotgun into a grenade launcher.

A 41-page file, called "Assorted Nasties," claims to be a recreation of a CIA manual allegedly commissioned in the 1950s and known as the "Devil's Diary," which details how to make bio- and chemical weapons from household items. "This book may seem controversial and dangerous, but such information may someday be the lifeblood of freedom fighters," one manual reads, addressing American right-wingers.

Among the piles of documents from Khost are letters from militants to their instructor, apparently an Iraqi Kurd called Abu Said, at Khaldan Camp. This camp is mentioned in confessions gleaned during several US terrorism investigations into the 1998 US Embassy blasts in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen last year.

"Thank you Abu Said," reads one letter from another Iraqi Kurd sent to Eritrea to train other militants, "for showing us how small people with faith can defeat the big people with equipment and power, who have no faith."

"We are grateful to God," reads another letter from a Yemen trainee, "to get this training and have this chance for martyrdom."

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