Al Qaeda: Not Short On Cash

Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai rang in the Persian New Year today in Mazar-e-Sharif, expressing the hope that this will be the year that peace comes to Afghanistan.

As those celebrations went forward, with readings of the Koran and ceremonial firings of cannons, a high-ranking U.S. military official warned that the al Qaeda terror network set up by Sept. 11 terror attacks suspected mastermind Osama bin Laden is not short on cash.

According to Maj. Gen. Frank Hagenbeck, the commander of the just-concluded Operation Anaconda: "If you saw some of these guys that we killed, they were outfitted better than most coalition forces, including us."

Speaking to reporters at the Bagram allied air base in Afghanistan, Hagenbeck said al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are trying to rebuild their forces in eastern Paktia province. Hagenbeck went on to characterize al Qaeda as an "adaptable enemy" drawing on new flows of cash and support among the local population.

Hagenbeck said intelligence data shows that well-outfitted fighters are already moving to regroup. He predicted increased activity as the weather improves.

"I can tell you there are al Qaeda operatives in Paktia right now who are going to great lengths to try to regroup or regenerate," Hagenbeck said in an interview with three news organizations in his office at Bagram air base. "They are also spending a lot of money to regroup."

He declined to elaborate on what measures al-Qaida operatives were taking. But he said it was a rich organization that could count on the traditional support of people in the eastern Paktia province on the Pakistani border.

The U.S. military questioned a man Thursday after detaining him at the site of a firefight with coalition forces near the volatile town of Khost in eastern Afghanistan.

Coalition forces found the man after a sweep near an airfield where gunmen fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars on U.S. and Afghan troops Tuesday night, touching off a firefight that wounded one American soldier.

The soldier, with the 101st Airborne Division, was shot in the arm, but the injury was not considered life-threatening, said Commander Frank Merriman, a spokesman for U.S. Central Command.

Three U.S.-allied Afghan fighters were killed in a raid on a checkpoint near the airfield, Afghan officials said.

Maj. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for the 10th Mountain Division, said more than 10 bodies were recovered, but he declined to say whether there was any link between them and al-Qaida or Taliban fighters. The detainee was injured and found among the dead, he said.

Tensions have been running high for months in Khost, located along one potential route into Pakistan for fighters fleeing Operation Anaconda, the biggest offensive in the Afghan war. U.S. special forces, who have been operating in the town for some time, came under fire at the Khost airport in early March but there were no injuries.

The town is just 40 miles east of the main battlefield in Operation Anaconda, which formally ended Monday.

For several hours Wednesday, the Pentagon thought it had found a clear link between Somalia and al Qaeda - a hand-held navigation device with the name "G. Gordon" on it. Brig. Gen. John Rosa said officials believed it once belonged to Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon, an Army Ranger killed in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, in October 1993.

Hours later, however, officials announced the device belonged to a U.S. soldier who fought against al Qaeda at the outset of Operation Anaconda.

A contingent of up to 1,700 British soldiers is on its way to Afghanistan to join the fight against al Qaeda forces and will begin arriving at Bagram in coming days.

"It will allow us to conduct more simultaneous missions, because we'll have more troops here than in the past," Hagenbeck said.

He dismissed claims by Afghan commanders that many al Qaeda fighters managed to escape during Operation Anaconda.

Hagenbeck said commanders used Predator remote-controlled spy planes to watch as hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters moved into the Shah-e-Kot valley in the first days of offensive - even as the area was under attack.

"They were trying to push through, and we allowed them to come in. They were coming in very small groups - three, four, five at a time, using a trail network and they flowed into the valley over a 48-hour period," he said. Hagenbeck said that even as the U.S. began to rout the enemy forces with heavy bombing and ground combat, the fighters continued to enter.

Based on monitoring of al Qaeda communications, Hagenbeck said it appeared al Qaeda leaders were unable to warn their fighters to turn back.

He said the influx of fighters was the reason for widely varying estimates of the number of enemy troops facing coalition forces. U.S. officials initially estimated there were 150 to 200 fighters in the Shah-e-Kot Valley. Estimates later rose to nearly 1,000.

Only a few dozen corpses have been recovered, but Hagenbeck said that was because the bodies had been blown to bits by U.S. bombs.

"A number of times, more than I can tell you, we watched from the aerial platforms guys being destroyed," Hagenbeck said. In one attack, "we had been watching an area with 40 plus people in it. They called in the aerial strike. We watched the explosion and all we saw afterward was nothing but dirt and mud."

In other war-related developments: