Al Qaeda hunt: violent shell game

From the air and from special-forces positions on the ground, it probably looked like a dangerous Al Qaeda group fighting yet another last stand.

It led some 1,000 British-led troops to spend the weekend sweeping through the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in Operation Condor. They are in pursuit of what officials call a "significant number" of Al Qaeda fighters who attacked an Australian patrol last Thursday. On Sunday, the operation was still under way.

But Afghan allies interviewed in Khost paint an entirely different portrait of Operation Condor: It's another tragic case of mistaken identity and poor communication in the Afghan war.

There were no Al Qaeda fighters there, according to villagers in Chambagh, a village about 20 miles northeast of Khost. Australian commandos were simply caught in the crossfire of two local tribes fighting over a mountain with no name.

On Thursday night, US AC-130 and helicopter gunships came to their rescue, pounding the mountaintop for 20 minutes. The result was 10 Afghans dead, three seriously injured, and another 12 villagers missing. None are Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters.

This is not the first misunderstanding between the US-led coalition and local Afghans. A few months ago in this area, an unmanned CIA spy plane fired a missile at a man who US forces suspected was Osama bin Laden; he turned out to be an unusually tall shepherd. But local Afghans, most of whom support the US-led troops here, say the US military must do a better job of communicating with local commanders and understanding tribal politics. Otherwise Afghan support for US troops will diminish sharply.

"The Americans can avoid this kind of mistake if they can contact the local commanders who know the area," says Ghazi Navaz Tani, a Khost government spokesman.

But others here are more understanding. "We cannot blame either the Americans or the villagers, because the US special forces ... didn't know about this tribal dispute," says Soor Gul, the security chief for Khost. "When they saw firing from the air, they thought these people were firing on them."

At Bagram Air Force base, near Kabul, a US military spokesmen says the forces in Khost were involved in a standard cleanup operation at a major "transit point" for Al Qaeda and the Taliban when the firing took place.

"Usually people who fire at you are enemies," Maj. Bryan Hilferty told a press conference at Bagram on Saturday. When asked if it was possible that the fighting was just another local dispute, he responded, "It's possible."

But when asked if the firing into the air could be an Afghan wedding celebration – as Pakistani press reported – Major Hilferty replied: "They were firing at us, and then they chased us for a few hours. Where I'm from, that's not a wedding."

The trouble started at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, when two US helicopters appeared, just as members of the Sabri and Mangal tribes were exchanging gun fire from their positions on the mountain. Both tribes say they had seen US helicopters in the area before, and assumed it was a routine patrol. Neither tribe realized that the helicopters were providing air support for a patrol of Australian special forces.

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