Operation Anaconda Leaves Bitterness in Its Wake

Every morning, a forlorn procession of the bereft and the defeated gathers at the gates of the governor’s pale yellow compound in this weather-beaten provincial outpost.

There are widows and orphans and stooped old men, all of them bearing tales of misery and loss written in flowing Persian script on slips of paper. These are sullen, bitter people.

“They are so angry, angry at the Americans,” said Gen. Sahib Jan Loodin Alozai, the deputy governor of Paktia province, who processes the complaints. “They blame the Americans for all their troubles.”

Nearly a month has passed since American-led Operation Anaconda ended here in the silver-capped mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Now the Americans are targets of residual hate and resentment in a province where support for the Taliban and the Al Qaeda terrorist network remains strong.

Some petitioners claim that American airstrikes killed their relatives. Others claim that their homes were destroyed by American bombs or missiles. Farmers complain that American soldiers have blocked access to their fields, ruining their spring planting season. People on the street glare and curse at passing American reporters. A Canadian reporter was seriously wounded last month by a grenade tossed into her vehicle a few miles outside town.

This is Pushtun country. Many people here are hostile to foreigners and sympathetic to the Pushtun-dominated Taliban. In their view, the Americans are Christian invaders who installed an interim government in Kabul dominated by the Pushtuns’ ethnic rivals, Tajiks from the north.

In place of routed Taliban fighters, the Americans have helped install Pushtun commanders and fighters of the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance in and around Gardez. These veterans of Afghan civil wars teamed with the American-led coalition forces to drive Taliban and Al Qaeda forces from their redoubt in the Shahi Kot valley, 25 miles southeast of here.

Even with the enemy on the run, the Americans and their Afghan allies are confronting a wellspring of sympathy that allows the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces to feed and arm themselves while they regroup. Unsigned leaflets, known as shabnama, or “night letters,” have appeared urging Afghans to kill or kidnap foreign--especially American--journalists, troops or aid workers.

According to local officials, Taliban and Al Qaeda survivors have withdrawn to the south and east, into the mountains of neighboring Paktika province. They say others have retreated to the Pakistani Pushtun tribal area known as Waziristan.

Fears of Resurgence

But some are still active in the Shahi Kot valley, according to Capt. Steven O’Connor, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition forces. O’Connor said rockets were fired several miles from coalition troops on April 3, causing no casualties but heightening fears of an enemy resurgence.

Maj. Tony de Reya, a British intelligence officer, said Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters are engaged in a “tactical pause.”

Abdul Rahim, a U.S.-backed commander in Gardez, said that although there might be as many as 900 surviving Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters to the south and east, none are left in his town.

“The only Al Qaeda and Taliban around here are dead ones,” Rahim said over a steaming lunch of meat and rice inside a command post.

Rahim, a wiry little man with a hooked nose and a deep sunburn, said his men continue to find enemy corpses, weapons, ammunition and training manuals inside caves in the valley. About 50 caves have been cleared and destroyed and a handful of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured, he said.

American and coalition forces are conducting “clearance operations” south and east of the Shahi Kot valley, Rahim said. Special Forces troops launch missions from an adobe fortress guarded by Afghan gunmen on the southern outskirts of Gardez. From time to time, American helicopters swoop low over the rooftops as they head south in search of signs of the enemy.

But in Gardez, many consider the Americans the enemy. Two incidents, in particular, have stoked passions here.

On Dec. 20, American warplanes killed 50 to 60 people in a convoy in Paktia. Survivors said the victims were tribal elders headed to Kabul, the Afghan capital, for the inauguration of interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai. The Pentagon said the dead were Taliban members who had opened fire on the planes.

On March 6, the Pentagon has acknowledged, women and children were among 14 people killed by an American airstrike on an Al Qaeda convoy fleeing the Shahi Kot valley. The civilians were family members traveling with Al Qaeda fighters.

“There were women and children in that convoy,” Sayed Aminullah, an Afghan worker for CARE International in Gardez, said of the March attack. “You don’t drop bombs on them, whatever the reason.”

Aminullah said that although he and many others in Gardez are grateful to the Americans for removing the Taliban, and especially the foreign fighters of Al Qaeda, “the killing of innocents has filled everyone with anger.”

Local officials claim, variously, that a dozen, 50, or more than 100 civilians were killed by American ordnance during Operation Anaconda. Alozai, the deputy governor, said he had processed 12 death claims but anticipates more. Townspeople say the numbers are much higher. With bodies buried and witnesses dispersed, an accurate total probably will never emerge.

“Not even the angels know the correct number,” Aminullah said.

In Kabul, the Ministry of Martyrs and the Disabled tries to track civilian war deaths nationwide. But the agency’s deputy minister, Baz Mohammed Zormati, said the Gardez region has not been surveyed because his employees are afraid to travel there.

Zormati, a Pushtun from Zormat, just south of Gardez, said he too refuses to go to Gardez. He supported the Northern Alliance, he said, and a bounty was put on his head by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who remains at large.

“If I went,” Zormati said, “maybe I would not return alive.”

Both the deputy governor and a local CARE official, Mohammed Rahim, say the homes of 200 to 300 people from 50 to 60 families were destroyed by American warplanes. Most of those homes were being used as military posts by Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who had evicted villagers in the Shahi Kot valley, both officials said.

The families have besieged the governor’s office with demands for American compensation, Alozai said. He said he relayed their complaints to “Mr. Mike,” his American military contact in Gardez, but received no reply. American officials say the State Department and Pentagon are studying the issue but have reached no decision.

Locals Not Consulted

Alozai, a Pushtun who took office six weeks ago, said the Americans did not consult local officials before launching Operation Anaconda.

If they had, he said, they might have negotiated a Taliban and Al Qaeda surrender, although U.S. commanders have said the enemy refused to surrender even when trapped or wounded. And several months earlier, Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters apparently slipped away while negotiations on a surrender were underway farther north in Tora Bora.

“The Americans didn’t show respect for our customs, and that has left a bitter taste,” Alozai said.

“You know, the people in Gardez need foreigners to hate,” Alozai said. “They used to hate the Russians. Now they hate the Americans.”

Even Rahim, the commander, said he was not entirely satisfied with the conduct of his American patrons.

Yes, he said, he had good relations with his American liaison officer, “Commander Brent.” And, yes, he fought alongside the Americans at Shahi Kot, and 130 of his 600 fighters are being trained by the Americans, he said.

But still, he said, it pains him that American warplanes killed civilians when they attacked a Taliban munitions depot in the settlement of Qalaye Niazy near Gardez on Dec. 29. Rahim claimed that 100 civilians living nearby were killed along with enemy fighters, but he offered no proof.

“The Americans never said they were sorry, or that they made a mistake,” Rahim said. “They just said every dead person was Taliban or Al Qaeda.”

He shook his head vigorously. “This is my area. I know the people. I know who’s Taliban and who’s Al Qaeda. These were just ordinary people.”

An American reporter was escorted to the site, down a rocky dirt track northwest of Gardez, by one of Rahim’s soldiers, a pimply-faced young man with an automatic rifle slung across his back. After complaining that his commander had yet to pay him a single afghani in salary, the soldier, Shaneef Shah, 22, led the way to a settlement of five flattened mud compounds.

Beside the ruins, nomads known as Kochis had pitched their tents. Women in red and crimson robes squatted in the dirt.

The largest compound had been the home of a Kochi who had served as a Taliban commander, Shah said. The man had gathered weapons and ammunition abandoned by fellow Taliban during their retreat from Gardez and trucked them to his compound.

When American warplanes flattened the depot in a series of strikes Dec. 29, Shah said, the commander and several Taliban were killed, but so were civilians in nearby homes. Shah said local Kochis estimated the number of dead at 50, as did a recent U.N. report.

Nearby, 16 graves had recently been dug, their white mourning flags whipping in the fierce desert wind. Shah said other victims had been taken elsewhere and buried.

Some of the ammunition had survived the airstrike. Asked why his commanders had not gathered it for their own use, Shah replied, “Because it’s sitting in the middle of a minefield.”

Shah suddenly grew anxious, but not because of mines. He said he feared that Kochi gunmen would arrive to find an American poking through Kochi homes that had been bombed by American planes.

“I’m afraid for you,” he told the American. “And for me, too.”