U.S. and Afghans Savor Victory in Valley

Shattered and empty, the mud-brick houses shone blood red in the sunlight. Beyond the village, a small truck sat twisted, black and bullet-riddled. On a hillside, two corpses of enemy fighters lay next to a clothing heap that was in fact the torso of a third--mute testament to the brutality of the battle.

For U.S. and Afghan forces, who had waged an intense campaign to clear this mountain redoubt of Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, it was a day to savor and declare victory.

Except for the corpses and a gray donkey hiding amid the remains of the buildings, the village of Shahi Kot was vacant Wednesday--its former occupants killed, captured or escaped. A stronghold that had taken years to construct no longer gave shelter to the foreign and Afghan disciples of Osama bin Laden who had lived and trained here since the fall of the Taliban government.

Afghan and U.S. commanders at the scene said they believed that very few enemy fighters escaped, and they expected to keep up the pressure on any remnants in the weeks ahead.

Securing the pristine Shahi Kot valley cost the lives of eight U.S. servicemen and three Afghans, all of whom died during the first three days of fighting early this month. Estimates of the Al Qaeda and Taliban dead have varied widely but usually have been put in the hundreds.

Three key figures in the ground campaign--Afghan Gens. Zia Lodin and Gul Hydar, and a lanky U.S. Special Forces officer who merely smiled when asked his name and rank--held a victory meeting on a hillock in this bowl-like valley as U.S. Apache attack helicopters buzzed overhead.

“I feel happy because I feel that the last stronghold of the enemy is destroyed and there is no other place for him to hide out,” a smiling Hydar told The Times as his officers and soldiers crowded in.

Hydar had arrived here in Paktia province Saturday at the head of a column of old Soviet tanks and 1,000 troops sent by the Defense Ministry from Kabul, the capital.

His men entered the Shahi Kot valley from the south Tuesday night--and, by most accounts, they didn’t have to fire a single shot in anger because the enemy had evaporated under the U.S. bombardment and ground campaign.

Lodin’s men--the so-called campaign troops equipped and trained by U.S. forces over the last six weeks to help root out Taliban and Al Qaeda strongholds--came from the north and saw more action.

They were in the initial assault up the valley March 2, when three of the Afghans were killed by enemy gunfire and mortars. Since then, Lodin said, they had been advancing slowly as U.S. air power cleared the way.

“Maybe a few of the Al Qaeda escaped, but we are looking for them and catching them to make sure none of them get away,” said Lodin, who was dressed in a tawny camouflage uniform and holding a short grenade launcher.

The unnamed U.S. officer estimated that 100 to 250 Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters had been in the Shahi Kot valley at the start of Operation Anaconda, but he noted that the battle zone included two valleys nearby where additional enemy forces had gathered. Most had probably been killed, he said, but he didn’t rule out that some had escaped the U.S.-Afghan blockade by using narrow mountain trails.

“A good rat line leads out of here,” he said. “Eventually it goes to Pakistan,” about 30 miles to the east.

The U.S. officer said the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces have used “a couple of dozen” caves in the Shahi Kot area. “Lord knows how many there are in the mountains to the east of here,” he said.

U.S. forces assume that the Shahi Kot caves are mined, he said. “They are going to be exploited extremely carefully by us, with our Afghan brothers,” he said.

He said Americans will continue to pursue the remnants of the Taliban wherever they are, but he wouldn’t be specific. Operations around Shahi Kot will continue on a smaller scale for several weeks, he said. After that, “I really can’t talk about where we’re going next.”

Gen. Abdul Wahab Joyendah, a senior Afghan commander, said the leader of the enemy fighters at Shahi Kot, Mullah Saifur Rahman Mansour, appears to have survived and escaped. The remnants of the band of holdouts might be heading to Pakistan, he said, or they might try to regroup, circle back through the mountains and resume their activities farther north, in Lowgar province.

U.S. forces captured about 20 people in the battle but have given few details.

On Thursday, Lodin and Hydar’s troops swarmed over the valley, which is ringed by pale green slopes that rise gradually into craggy 12,000-foot mountains covered with snow.

Aside from the main village of Shahi Kot, the valley--which appears to be about a mile wide--contains at least two smaller adobe settlements plus isolated buildings on the hillsides. A soldier for Hydar pointed out one building that he said concealed the entrance to one of the Al Qaeda cave complexes.

Because of the possibility of land mines and booby traps at the entrances to these hidden lairs, the reporters who reached Shahi Kot were told to stay clear until the sites can be thoroughly examined by mine-clearance crews.

Mohammed Sabar, leading a squad of Hydar’s fighters, said that after spending a day and two nights in the village, he and his men had found a sizable cache of weapons that included rockets, mortars, hand grenades and automatic weapons.

The weapons were being turned over to the Americans, he said. While he talked, a soldier nearby set off a bit of explosive material that erupted with a bang--just to amuse himself and startle the visitors. He and his comrades laughed at the joke.

Besides weapons, fighters said they found books, manuals and documents written in Arabic and the Chechen language. One Afghan fighter had taken as a souvenir a flat sports mitt used for training in martial arts. Another had snapped up a paperback of Koranic teachings in the Arabic and Cyrillic alphabets. A third was seen claiming a small brown horse as war booty.

The corpses were about 100 steps from the village on the other side of a ridge that appeared to be a defensive position against forces coming from the west. One body was fairly intact. The fighter was on his stomach and wore a green camouflage jacket over a brown leather vest and baggy green felt pants. His hair and hands were reddish, as though colored with henna.

A young soldier who had come with Hydar from the arid plains north of Kabul casually poked at the body and then coolly undid the black plastic digital watch on its wrist. The soldier, named Hamed, later showed a reporter that it was still keeping time perfectly.

“I don’t feel any pity for him, and I don’t feel sorry about taking it,” the 18-year-old, who said he has been fighting the Taliban since he was 14, said about the watch. “I feel sorry for myself.”

On the hillside near the bodies were scattered some of their belongings: a torn pouch, a purple toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, shoes that may have been blown off one of the men, a roll of toilet paper. According to soldiers, there were papers in the pockets identifying the men as Chechens.

Reporters reached Shahi Kot by driving over several mountains on bumpy, unpaved roads, then crossed through the village on a narrow lane.

The village itself was a shambles, and it looked from a distance like a half-eroded sandcastle. At the entrance to the village, reporters came across two U.S. Special Forces fighters, who took them to the rendezvous point of the commanders.

The Afghan soldiers at the meeting appeared not to believe their luck that the village had fallen so easily. “It was nothing,” said a soldier called Ajmal. “The first day was difficult--we lost three guys--but after that, it was not a hard battle.”

Afghan fighters insisted that a large number of dead would be found up in the mountains or buried in destroyed buildings and in the debris of caves. Hydar said he had seen graves everywhere. Ajmal said he had counted 20 bodies.

“There are houses that are destroyed, and under them are dead bodies that cannot be counted,” said fighter Mohammed Bashir. “We know because flies are going there.”