Al Qaeda Uses Bait and Switch

As furious fighting swept the hillsides here Thursday, killing dozens of anti-Taliban soldiers, it seemed likely that fruitless attempts to broker the surrender of besieged Al Qaeda fighters may have done more harm than good.

As another cease-fire between hundreds of Al Qaeda holdouts and Afghan tribal forces collapsed Thursday morning, anti-Taliban leaders complained that some of the combat-hardened followers of Osama bin Laden had used a feint toward submission to improve their position on the rocky battlefield while others took the opportunity to escape.

“They ceased fire as an excuse to run away,” tribal commander Haji Ayub said.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld agreed that many of the Al Qaeda fighters have wriggled out of the trap that was set for them by the anti-Taliban leaders. But he vowed to track them down.

“It is a big country with a porous border,” Rumsfeld said. “These folks have moved back and forth across borders. They have money. . . . There is no doubt in my mind but that any number of Al Qaeda [members] have gone across various borders and do intend to fight another day. And we intend to find them.”

The failed attempt to negotiate a surrender of the besieged Al Qaeda forces underlined a difference of opinion between some Afghan militia leaders, who hope to end the battle with as little fighting as possible, and the Bush administration, which wants to crush Al Qaeda.

Moreover, it revealed disagreements among the Afghan warlords.

“We really wanted to arrange a surrender, because we wanted to stop the bloodshed,” commander Ali Mohammed said, watching thick clouds sink over the mountains. “When the people are bleeding, that’s not the right way.”

But Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the United States is not ready to offer Al Qaeda forces any “deals” to give up other than the assurance that they will be allowed to live.

“If they surrender, they may come out alive,” Rumsfeld said. “If they don’t surrender, they may not. And it’s kind of their choice.

“I personally would like to see us get our hands on them and be able to interrogate them and find out about the Al Qaeda networks all across the globe. These people know things, and I’d like to know those things.”

Rumsfeld said additional U.S. special operations troops have been sent to the area, but he declined to say how many or specify what they were doing. U.S. aircraft continued striking Al Qaeda positions today.

Meanwhile, a contingent of Marines moved Thursday into the city of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan to try to prevent the escape of defeated Taliban fighters.

“In and around Kandahar, we know that there are a couple of areas of Taliban forces remaining,” said Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “With coalition support, our Marines, operating out of their base at Camp Rhino, continue their efforts to secure possible routes of escape for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who may try to flee the Kandahar region.”

A number of helicopters flew over the city about 2:30 a.m. today. A short time later, a convoy of more than three dozen tanks and military vehicles apparently carrying U.S. troops moved through Kandahar.

In Tora Bora, after Al Qaeda fighters put out a radio call Monday begging tribal soldiers to stop the attacks, Afghan commander Haji Mohammed Zaman worked out a cease-fire agreement.

But another anti-Taliban commander, Hazrat Ali, criticized the deal. Ali thought Zaman had given Al Qaeda too much time to surrender, and left the front line soldiers unattended. So the two men sat on the ground and bickered, and in the process forgot to send food, blankets and ammunition to soldiers who had fought their way high into the frigid mountains that day.

By the time the commanders finished their discussions, the cold and hungry soldiers had grown disgruntled and abandoned their posts. Late that night, Al Qaeda fighters swarmed forward to seize back crucial stretches of the Milawa Valley. Tribal soldiers were still battling to regain the area Thursday.

The hillsides rang with some of the war’s fiercest fighting in the hours after the surrender deal fell apart.

By the end of Thursday, 30 tribal soldiers were dead and more than 40 were wounded. The smell of sulfur hung in the wintry air from a steady rain of bombs. Al Qaeda casualties were unknown.

Meanwhile, from the camps of the tribal soldiers to the drawing rooms of the Nangarhar governor’s palace, irritation with the Americans was obvious. U.S. forces sabotaged Al Qaeda’s confidence in the accord by bombing during the cease-fire, then rejected the terrorists’ proposed terms of surrender, tribal leaders said.

“The American bombs disturbed our negotiations,” commander Ali Mohammed said.

Al Qaeda “said they were ready to surrender, but they only wanted to surrender to the United Nations and their own embassies, not to America,” said Haji Abdul Qadir, governor of Nangarhar province. “On that condition, the Americans were not satisfied.”

Rumsfeld angrily rejected suggestions that the United States blocked an agreement. He said no acceptable deal had ever been on the table.

“The United States did not nix or stop or put the kibosh on anything,” Rumsfeld said.

“I do not even know if anything was really offered. I have read the same reports you have, where somebody [said] that if we had done this and if we had let them keep their weapons and if we had let them turn themselves in to the Red Cross or somebody, that then everything would be fine and it would all end. Now, that’s nonsense.

“We’re there to stop those people,” he said. “And if they want to surrender, they can do it in one second.”

U.S. forces have been fighting alongside Afghan tribesmen in parallel assaults that should, in theory, be complementary: U.S. warplanes pound away from overhead while trained Afghan guerrillas overrun the land below, supported by an increasing number of U.S. special operations soldiers.

But there have been snags. U.S. bombs have repeatedly struck Afghan allies, tribal commanders say. And despite a month of complaints, threats and delegations of elders who trekked repeatedly into the mountains to urge Al Qaeda to leave, Afghans have moved hesitantly against the terrorist compound.

When talks gave way to gunfire again Thursday, the reluctance was gone, and tribal troops attacked in earnest. The rattle of machine guns, tanks and mortars shook the canyons all day. “Our battle is now underway,” Hazrat Ali said.

At the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs’ Myers agreed. “Right now, we’re in the middle of a pretty big fight in the Tora Bora area,” he said. “It’s war. And in the middle of the war, we’re going to do what it takes to win that piece of it.”

Heavy snow fell in the mountains Thursday, blotting out the rocky peaks and sealing off the passages out of the besieged Al Qaeda hide-out. These hills get colder every day, and with each new snowfall, escape from Tora Bora becomes more improbable.

On the front line, tribal commanders said the snow arrived too late to make any difference.

They believe Al Qaeda fighters used the cease-fire lull to sneak away from the massive honeycomb of caves and trenches. The fugitives could brave the 5-foot snows of the nearest border crossing, commanders said, or trek west along the mountain ridges before dropping south into Pakistan.

Earlier in the week, commanders claimed they were fighting between 1,500 and 2,500 soldiers. By Thursday, that estimate had plunged to 700--but the battle to flush every last Al Qaeda fighter from the deep, complicated system of caves could take months, Qadir warned.

“These are very high mountains,” he said. “It won’t take a few days.”

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Stack reported from Tora Bora and Kempster from Washington.