BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, 27 July 2003 — US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan expect Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters to resort to terror attacks after their failure on the battlefield, a US military spokesman said yesterday.
Col. Rodney Davis said the Taleban and Al-Qaeda have been reluctant to attack coalition forces en masse, opting not to confront troops engaged in a major US-led Afghan National Army combat operation under way in southeast Afghanistan.
“They tend not to want to take us on head-on and this is when they typically resort to acts of terrorism: criminal acts, killing people in mosques, burning up schools,” the colonel told reporters at Bagram Air Base 50 kilometers north of Kabul.
“Given the fact that we’re experienced in this type of warfare, we would expect anti-coalition forces to probably try to commit acts of terrorism, because whenever they are unable to be successful on the battlefield they resort to criminal and terrorist acts so of course we’re preparing ourselves for any possibility,” he said.
Four German troops with the separate peacekeeping International Security Assistance Force were killed by a suicide car bomber in Kabul on June 7 in an attack blamed on Al-Qaeda. Suspected Taleban also last month carried out a bomb attack and assassination in mosques in their former heartland of southern Kandahar province.
US soldiers last weekend killed as many as 24 Taleban in a failed ambush in Kandahar near the Pakistan border in what Davis called the biggest attack on the coalition in months.
Some 1,000 Afghan National Army soldiers backed by US and Italian troops are engaged in Operation Warrior Sweep against suspected Taleban and Al-Qaeda remnants in the Zormat valley south of Paktia province’s capital Gardez, 100 kilometers south of Kabul.
“Soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division ... conducted an air assault in the Shahi Khot area, south of Gardez, to disrupt the planning of future terrorist activities within Afghanistan,” Davis said.
“The purpose of the assault was to clear the area, which is a traditional sanctuary for anti-coalition and anti-government fighters.”
Coalition forces have also cleared illegal checkpoints on the road linking Gardez to Khost, 70 kilometresto the southeast, while Afghan troops have wrested control of access to Zormat from local militia leaders, Davis said.
