GARDEZ, Afghanistan — As a decisive confrontation with al-Qaida loomed in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan around Shahikot, Afghan commanders prepared Friday for a wider campaign intended to chase terrorists who may escape the battle and to flush out any other enemy pockets in the area.
The interim Afghan government in Kabul has begun assembling a force that is equipped with heavy armor and capable of striking not only the concentration of al-Qaida fighters hiding in the mountains around Shahikot but throughout Paktia province and neighboring Logar and Paktika provinces and Khost district. The goal is to eliminate the threat from the terrorist network and Taliban holdouts instead of allowing them to regroup later.
"Not only in Shahikot — if terrorists are anywhere in Afghanistan, we're ready to bring our troops there and destroy them," said Gul Haidar, commander of a reinforcement detachment that arrived Friday evening here in the capital of Paktia, about 95 miles southeast of Kabul.
In Florida, President Bush told the families of two men killed in the battle for Shahikot that "we ache for you." Wiping away tears, Bush said that as the war in Afghanistan continues, "we will take loss of life, and I'm sad for loss of life."
U.S. troops operating in the frozen 10,000-foot peaks of Afghanistan's Arma mountains moved to cut off escape routes as al-Qaida forces based around Shahikot showed signs of weakening.
U.S. military officials said coalition forces clearly had the upper hand and, one week into Operation Anaconda, were facing a significantly weakened foe. "We have destroyed a great deal of enemy forces," Col. Frank Wiercinski, commander of the ground troops in the operation, told reporters at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
While "still seeing small pockets of resistance" from a "very determined" enemy, Wiercinski said, the U.S.-led coalition of more than 2,000 American, Afghan and allied troops was now "in control of the high ground." Coalition forces have destroyed some key enemy observation posts, making it harder for al-Qaida fighters to accurately target them with mortar fire.
Briefing reporters in Washington, Air Force Brig. Gen. John Rosa described the latest fighting as "sporadic," likely reflecting al-Qaida's weakened ranks. "I suspect that as we collapse caves, as we force them out of their fighting positions, it's very difficult for them to get reorganized," Rosa said.
Chilly temperatures and cloudy skies that turned into flash snowstorms Friday night limited airstrikes by U.S. warplanes to satellite-guided bombs, Rosa said, but conditions in Afghanistan improved later. He said U.S. warplanes had flown 200 missions Friday and dropped 75 bombs.
The poor weather could also delay plans for a final ground assault. Afghan commanders have said a renewed ground offensive could be launched as early as this weekend, fortified by reinforcements from around the country. Amanullah Zadran, a cabinet minister in the interim government and part of a powerful family from around Gardez, said the attack should start soon. "It should last six or seven days at most against the al-Qaida," he said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in television interviews amended an earlier prediction that the assault might end this weekend, saying now that it likely would last another week to 10 days. "The weather is just terrible so a lot of our air assets are not able to fly. But my guess is that over the coming period of some days . . . it will wind down," Rumsfeld told Fox News Channel.
Rumsfeld reported no evidence of any enemy fighters offering to surrender.
"We've seen them try to sneak out, and we're stopping them," he told CNN. "And we've seen some people trying to sneak in — small numbers, ones, twos, threes; nothing like tens, or twenties or thirties."
About 700 enemy fighters have been confirmed dead on the battlefield, according to an officer involved in planning and directing the fight. "We are killing these guys in bucket loads," the officer said. "We're just afraid they'll side up and make a concerted effort to break out. As it is, we're slaughtering them."
Enemy reinforcements did not bother the U.S. commanders, he said. "It's like bugs coming to the bug zapper outside a South Carolina drive-in."
How many al-Qaida and allied forces remain in the Shahikot area was less certain, however. Although U.S. officials have begun to acknowledge that they underestimated how many fighters they faced when they launched the battle on March 2, different assessments continued to emerge.
Rosa told reporters in Washington that about 200 defenders remained in the mountainous reaches around Shahikot, but he provided few details on how that number was reached except to say that "we're seeing them move."
However, Yusuf Hemat, an Afghan political leader who was briefed Friday on the battle during a meeting with U.S. officials, said he was told there are about 4,000 al-Qaida members in the area, including Arabs, Chechens and Uzbeks, all under the leadership of Taliban commander Saeef Rahman Mansour. In addition, he said, he was told about 500 family members of al-Qaida fighters have taken refuge in Logar province.
Here in Paktia, Hemat said the U.S. officials told him the al-Qaida forces were concentrated in three places: Shahikot and two nearby villages, Lakali and Nika. In late December, Hemat said, he passed along information to the Americans that Mansour was working with al-Qaida in Paktia. "I gave this information to the Americans," he said. "I told them Mansour was supporting al-Qaida. They ignored it."
To take on this force, the Afghan government has solicited additional units from around the country, trying to forge a unified army from Afghanistan's historically quarrelsome ethnic and regional militias.
Besides attacking al-Qaida, the creation of such a force could help bring the many independent-minded militias in Afghanistan under the control of the national government in Kabul. The U.S. military has been helping the interim government form a national army that would subsume the regional forces.
But the idea runs counter to custom in Afghanistan, where the people of one region often view those of another through skeptical, if not hostile eyes. The arrival of troops from other parts of the country stirred bitterness Friday that could make it difficult for U.S. commanders to hold together their fragile coalition.