Hunt for Al Qaeda intensifies

About 85 US Marines in light-brown camouflage and 15 other Western fighters clothed in black leapt from helicopters onto the bumpy tarmac of the Khost airport yesterday. And Afghanistan's minister for frontier and tribal affairs announced an imminent "Al Qaeda cleansing" campaign in eastern Afghanistan.

Later in the day, the US troops manned machine-gun posts atop a control tower, patrolled the immediate perimeter of the airport, and oversaw the work of local Afghans who were renovating the airstrip. Several new yellow and orange tents popped up on top of the airport terminal and behind it on the edge of a small forest.

The newly arrived soldiers joined a special-forces team that has been here since early January. Afghan commanders and re- gional officials say they are now planning a major new push in the region to capture elusive Al Qaeda members.

"We've decided to go after the pockets of remaining Al Qaeda here, but we can't say when the operations will begin for matters of secrecy," says Minister Aman Khan Zadran, Afghanistan's most senior official for frontier and tribal affairs. The minister is the brother of the regional Pashtun governor, Badshah Khan.

It isn't clear yet that the US military, which has denied even sending more troops to the region in the wake of the killing of one US officer, is operating in tandem with the local Afghan leaders.

But on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that he believed that Osama bin Laden himself was still present in Afghanistan, although there has been increased speculation this week that the man responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attacks against the US may have fled the region.

And several senior Afghan officers say that the US special forces have begun talking to them about providing "special training" to local fighters.

"Maybe they are going to teach us to jump out of airplanes with parachutes or just use some of their high-tech equipment," says Cmdr. Sakhi Jan Wafadar, a renowned anti-Soviet fighter who is helping the US military secure the airport from possible terrorist attacks. "I think that what all this means, though, is that the Americans now understand that there are well-trained Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters along the border with Pakistan who can easily regroup and make trouble for us. I think they will train us to attack their hideouts."

Despite the new talk of "training" though, the US military has avoided using Afghan proxies in its fight in the three key provinces of Khost, Paktia, and Paktika. Here, the US - in a departure from the strategy it used in the Tora Bora area to try to capture bin Laden - has shunned the offers of help from local warlords.

That is most likely because of the Tora Bora experience. Several Afghan warlords, while on the US payroll to help capture Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, cut deals with Al Qaeda members at the same time and helped them escape.

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