A squeeze on Taliban, bin Laden

US forces also enjoy one of the most important advantages in any war: supplies. With US Marines securing a key airstrip 60 miles south of Kandahar, US and anti-Taliban forces could sustain a war for months or years, while the Taliban are likely to run out of food, ammunition, and parts in a matter of weeks.

In Islamabad, Taliban spokesman Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef says that Mullah Omar has told his followers it is better to die with dignity than to live with humiliation. "Mullah Omar has advised and instructed everyone to fight to the death and not to bow down in front of brutality and blasphemy," says Mr. Zaeef, former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. Experts say that Mullah Omar is likely to be in Kandahar itself, since he would not be able to persuade his supporters to fight to the death if he himself were not at risk.

The looming battle against Arab forces in Tora Bora, however, could last much longer than the Taliban itself. The reason is terrain.

Tora Bora, which means "black dust" in Pashtu, is a small lumbermill village tucked away in a narrow valley of the Spinghar, or White Mountain, range of southeastern Afghanistan. Just 35 miles south of Jalalabad, it is thought to be almost entirely occupied by Arab militants and other members of the Al Qaeda terrorist network set up by Mr. bin Laden. Afghan villagers from the area say they have seen bin Laden within the past 10 days, but others say he is on the move, possibly toward Kandahar.

Anti-Taliban commanders have said Tora Bora "is almost impossible to attack" from the ground, since just a single unit of 30 heavily armed soldiers can hold off thousands of troops from peaks that guard the narrow entrance to the Tora Bora Valley. Even if ground troops do make it to the valley's caves, they'll find well-fortified hideouts, built by anti-Soviet guerrillas during the 1980s at the base of Shreekhil mountain, and improved in the 1990s by bin Laden.

A week of heavy US bombing on Tora Bora has killed 100 to 200 civilians, local residents say, but left the tunnel complex largely untouched. More sophisticated weapons, such as the fiery fuel-air bomb, are difficult to use in this narrow valley, since heavy crosswinds make it hard to direct the bomb to the mouth of the caves, where it can do the most damage.

A local Afghan who has been inside the cave complex describes it being almost like an exclusive hotel. "That base is made like a cave, some 350 meters long into the mountain," he says on condition of anonymity. "They made an electrical system ... and the water that drives the electricity is coming from the peaks of the mountains."

"The entrance is wide enough to drive a car through," he says, noting that it is surrounded by trees and "very hard to see from the sky." "After 15 meters, you come to a door made of wood. After the door, the way is made into a hall ... with doors on the left and the right. Some rooms are big, some are small, but the walls are cemented."

The Arabs receive supplies from local villagers, by donkey and camel, but villagers are forced to take the longer 10 hour trek to the base for security reasons and not the closer three-hour walk used by the Arabs themselves. "Osama warned the villagers, if they come to the cave, people will die and no one will be responsible for their deaths," says the Afghan.

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