Enemy Forces Exceed 1,000, Afghan Claims

A man who claims he was abducted and taken to the Al Qaeda and Taliban mountain base now under siege by the U.S. military estimated Saturday that more than 1,000 fighters are there and said they have managed to remain relatively secure inside their elaborate caves despite heavy American bombing.

Abdul Rahman Beheshti, a 22-year-old satellite television technician, would be the first eyewitness to speak out about recent events inside the Shahi Kot cave complex, where a combined force of Afghan Taliban and foreign Al Qaeda fighters has held out despite an intensive, eight-day U.S.-led air and ground campaign.

Although his account could not be independently verified, Beheshti sounded convincing as he sat nervously in a dingy restaurant and later at a private house and for almost 2 1/2 hours described being captured, moved from cave to cave, and eventually let go after seven days during which he installed and programmed five satellite TV dishes and receivers for his captors.

The assault on the Shahi Kot complex began March 2, but so far the only information about it has come from U.S. military spokesmen and some of their Afghan allies--reporting that the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters have suffered more than 500 dead, that their escape routes are being choked off and that they are near to being wiped out or surrendering.

Navy Lt. Timothy Boehlke, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., which is directing the war, said the tempo of the battle near the eastern city of Gardez had changed little Saturday as airstrikes and ground activity continued. No additional casualties had been reported within the U.S.-led coalition, which continued to dominate the battle, Boehlke said.

“It seems like the majority is coming from our end as far as activity,” he said. “We’re not receiving a whole lot back.”

Beheshti’s account, given to a small group of reporters that included representatives of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, presented a sharply different view. He said that the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces deep inside their granite caves are amply supplied with arms, food and creature comforts, including portable televisions.

He said that they are well sheltered and that from the caves in which he was held, he could barely hear bombs falling in the distance. During the course of the week, he said, he saw only two dead Talibs.

Beheshti, a boyish-looking man with a shock of black hair and a thin beard, said that he was held in a series of caves dug out of the sides of the mountains. He said that judging from the large number of fighters who crowded into the caves when the bombing started, and those whom he could see when he was being moved around, he believes that more than 1,000 fighters are there.

For the most part, Beheshti said, the caves had arched ceilings, and their floors were covered in carpets, with pillows and mattresses lining the walls. Light came from solar-powered tube lamps, he said, and some of the caves had paved terraces in front.

The caves had many entrances and exits and were often connected to one another, he said. Some were used to store weapons and ammunition, he said.

Aside from himself, Beheshti said, his captors had one Western prisoner with them who had been taken captive sometime earlier, before the beginning of the assault on Shahi Kot, and who was being regularly tortured with severe beatings. Beheshti said that the captive was tall and light-haired and spoke English but that he did not know his nationality.

Other Captives Are Seen

During the week, the Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters also captured about seven Afghans who they said had been fighting alongside the Americans, Beheshti said. He said they were later taken away, apparently to be let go.

According to Beheshti, his seven-day ordeal began when a man came to his workshop in Gardez on March 1 and asked him to install a satellite dish in the town of Zormat, southwest of Gardez.

But when he got there, he said, he was instead taken farther, to a village named Kolalgu. From there, he said, he was forced at gunpoint into a pickup truck, blindfolded and eventually led on foot into the Shahi Kot cave complex, where he was informed that he was a prisoner.

Beheshti said he was held by an Arab who was called simply “the Sheik.” The first night, he said, he was tied up with rope around his arms and legs and beaten on the soles of his feet with sticks. The Taliban fighters chastised him for installing satellite television dishes in private homes, which his captors said was sinful and un-Islamic.

Later, however, he realized that they were interested in him mainly because he was a technician able to install satellite dishes and program TV channels for them to watch as a way to obtain information, he said.

His captors--who he said were mostly Afghan Talibs, although there were a fair number of Al Qaeda Arabs as well--demanded that the satellite dishes he installed be able to tune in the Al Jazeera channel, a pan-Arab news station based in Qatar and frequently used by Osama bin Laden as a means to broadcast his views to the world. They also wanted to watch other Arabic-language channels, Beheshti said.

No Interest in Surrender

He said he thinks he was freed only after a friend of his father came to the caves and pleaded for him and after he had successfully completed all the technical tasks asked of him. He also said that he was instructed to deliver a message that the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Shahi Kot are not interested in surrendering and that their fellow Afghans should not cooperate with the Americans.

“I did not expect that they would release me so easily. I thought that after fixing those satellite receivers, I would be killed, so other people would not know,” he said.

On the first day of the bombing, Beheshti said, he saw the overall commander of the Shahi Kot complex, Saifur Rahman Mansour, who lost one hand and part of another in previous Afghan wars. As he recalled, Rahman looked nervous and was moving and talking very quickly.

“When someone is scared, you can see it in his face,” he said of Rahman.

Rahman, a mullah who had been a military commander for the Taliban, told the fighters during a religious speech that they should prepare to be martyrs, Beheshti said.

“He said that we should have our burial shrouds with us all the time and be martyrs for the sake of our country and fight until the last man,” he said.

On Friday morning, when he was about to be freed, Beheshti said, he heard some of the Afghan fighters talking and laughing about a peace proposal that had just arrived.

“I heard them say that from Gardez they had sent a message saying that they should all surrender. They were talking about it and laughing, saying things like, ‘OK, let’s go. Let’s surrender.’ ”

“They will not surrender,” Beheshti said. “They want to either win the war or to be martyred.”

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Times staff writer John Hendren in Washington contributed to this report.