Escaped Taliban may fight again

For all intents and purposes, the battle of Shah-i-Kot Valley is over. US-led coalition forces are rummaging through hideouts and caves in search of information or ammunition left behind by Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. While US military officials are declaring "Operation Anaconda" a success, Afghan officials and progovernment forces are providing a somewhat different report card.

If the US forces had acted earlier, says a senior government minister from the area of eastern Afghanistan in which the fighting has concentrated, they could have had more success in catching the big fish – and sustained fewer losses.

"That was a failure of American intelligence," says Amanullah Zadran, the minister for frontiers and tribal affairs. "They were too late and did it at a time that was dangerous to them and gave them more problems than they needed. They didn't know the right people."

But the Pentagon says its timing was impeccable – and that it has the results to show for it. "The commanders developed a plan and moved when they felt it was appropriate, and the commanders on the ground are pleased with the success of the operation to this point," says Maj. Brad Lowell, spokesperson for US Central Command.

From the perspective of one Afghan ally, however, the Pentagon's timing was less than ideal. In an interview in Kabul, Zadran says the attack began months after he and others gave coalition forces information about an Al Qaeda presence in the Shah-i-Kot Valley. He warns that the senior leadership of Al Qaeda and Taliban are continuing to slip away, with the help of local villagers who had been cultivated and paid well over a period of months.

Come spring, they may pose a more formidable threat to US-led forces and the Afghan interim government, bolstered by four Islamic parties that appear to be uniting with them to form a neomujahideen bloc. Already, its mullahs are calling on Muslims in provincial areas to sign up for a new jihad to drive out the latest invading infidels – the US-led coalition and the interim administration they helped install.

"They [Al Qaeda and other anti-Western forces] are waiting for the summer," says Zadran. The climate will change completely, and if the US and the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] don't strengthen their troops rapidly and take serious measures, there's a real danger of a guerrilla war being launched against them."

But Major Lowell expressed confidence that the US would be able to handIe any Taliban comeback. "If a pocket or regrouping develops we will address it as we did with Operation Anaconda," he says.

Zadran maintains there's work for the US to do right now: He says there are still key Al Qaeda strongholds in the villages of Sarana and Azmani that the US has yet to attack, although he says he is all but begging for them to strike.

In these villages, which are south of Gardez, he says there are between 160 and 180 mostly Chechen and Arab Al Qaeda forces allied with Jalal Uddin Haqqani, a commander who held Zadran's ministry under the Taliban.

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