KABUL, 15 August 2005 — A key Taleban commander was captured and four Taleban militants were killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan in the latest violence before parliamentary elections, the US military said yesterday. Afghan security forces backed by US troops in a raid on Saturday captured Qari Baba, former governor of Ghazni province under the hard-line Taleban regime, said US military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O’Hara.
Qari Baba had been leading attacks against US troops and the Afghan government in the southeastern province of Ghazni. The National Security Directorate “led the raid and coalition forces worked together to detain Qari Baba at his home in an operation that was a success for all concerned,” O’Hara said.
A weapons cache of 16 AK-47s, several machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades and launchers, cell phones and a large amount of ammunition was discovered in his house in Andar district, he said. On Friday, three insurgents were killed and two Afghan National Police were wounded in a firefight near the town of Deh Rawood in the southern province of Uruzgan, the US military said in a statement.
The battle broke out after Afghan and US forces, patrolling in the area, came into contact with an unknown number of “enemy combatants” near the town which has been a hotbed for Taleban activity, it said. The same day one “enemy combatant” was killed in another attack by seven to 10 militants on an Afghan-US military convoy south of Kabul, the statement said.
Hundreds of American Marines and Afghan special forces trekked far into remote Afghan mountains to retake a valley controlled by militants suspected of ambushing a team of US commandos and shooting down a special forces helicopter. The major offensive Saturday in eastern Kunar province, near the border with Pakistan, is the biggest yet against those believed responsible for the twin attacks on June 28, the deadliest blow for American forces in Afghanistan since ousting the Taleban in 2001.
Three members of a four-man Navy SEAL team were killed in the ambush, and all 16 troops on board the Chinook chopper that was sent to rescue them died when it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Saturday’s offensive came after a deadly week for US forces in Afghanistan. Seven American troops have died, as well as dozens of suspected militants and civilians, reinforcing concerns that crucial elections next month to elect lawmakers for a new legislature may be threatened by widespread violence.
Hundreds of Afghan rebels, as well as militants from Pakistan and Chechnya, are thought to be hiding in Kunar’s Korengal Valley and are intent on disrupting the elections, according to US military and Afghan special forces commanders in the area.
“We want them running for their lives way up in the hills where they can’t attack polling stations,” said Capt. John Moshane, of the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, based in Hawaii. “We want to isolate them from the community.”
US and Afghan forces started moving into position at one end of the valley Thursday, about 190 kilometers east of the capital Kabul. They were digging mortar and machine-gun pits for a temporary resupply base in the middle of a corn field near Kandagal, a village of about 100 farmers and their families.
The move sparked an immediate response from the militants, who attacked a nearby US base and a convoy of troops with rockets, but they all missed. American and Afghan troops started hiking into the rugged mountains Friday and Saturday, as A-10 attack aircraft circled high above.
Many of the teams led lines of donkeys laden with food and water. The operation was expected to last at least two weeks, Moshane said.
One of the main objectives is breaking up a network of militants led by a local Taleban leader, Ahmad Shah, also known as Ismail, who is believed responsible for the June 28 attacks, said Kirimat Tanhah, a commander in the US-trained and funded Afghan Special Forces. Shah is suspected of having ties to Al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan, he said.
“Ismail’s men ambushed the SEAL team and shot down the helicopter,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Many of them are foreigners and have trained in Pakistan and elsewhere.” He said Shah was also paying local impoverished villagers to fight for him.
