ChicSunTimes

Afghan citizens asked to help finish manhunt

November 20, 2001

BY BRYAN SMITH STAFF REPORTER

With reward leaflets falling over Afghanistan "like snowflakes in December in Chicago," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday he hopes the big bucks they offer will encourage Afghans to flush Osama bin Laden out of his dangerous caves.

Meanwhile, four international journalists and an Afghan translator were feared dead, after gunmen ambushed their convoy on a road between Jalalabad and Kabul. An anti-Taliban commander in Jalalabad said the attackers were bandits, not Taliban or his own fighters.

The caves that pock the forbidding mountainsides have long been the focal point for the hunt for bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, but Rumsfeld said Monday that he hopes the $25 million reward that's been offered will persuade Afghans to search them so American forces won't have to.

Otherwise, the U.S. military will have to send in different kinds of forces from the special operations troops now in Afghanistan, the defense secretary said.

''Our hope is that the dual incentive of helping to free that country from a very repressive regime . . . coupled with substantial monetary rewards'' will persuade ''a large number of people to begin crawling through those tunnels and caves looking for the bad folks,'' Rumsfeld said.

The defense secretary insisted that there is no way the United States is going to let Taliban or al-Qaida leaders leave the southern city of Kandahar, even if an opposition group gives permission.

Rumsfeld also described fighting around the Taliban's last northern stronghold, Kunduz, as fierce.

U.S. bombing moved closer to the encircled city, and alliance artillery joined in what appeared to be the heaviest attacks at the front in days.

Alliance commanders continued to negotiate a surrender by two-way radio. But refugees who reached alliance lines recounted a defiant message from foreign Muslims in the city: ''We are going to be martyrs. We are not leaving Kunduz.''

Rumsfeld said he could not confirm reports of Taliban fighters being killed to prevent their surrender.

''Any idea that those people in that town [Kunduz] who have been fighting so viciously and who refuse to surrender should end up in some sort of a negotiation, which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilize other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States, is something that I would certainly do everything I could to prevent,'' he said.

At home, meanwhile, President Bush moved to put airport baggage screeners on the federal payroll, the latest in a series of efforts aimed at tightening airport security and increasing passenger confidence.

In other developments Monday:

*More American commandos were on the ground in Afghanistan as U.S. jets unleashed intense bombing strikes against Taliban front lines just outside Kunduz, where Taliban and al-Qaida forces have been holding out for days.

*International negotiators reportedly agreed to meet this weekend in Germany to discuss forming a new broad-based Afghan government. Northern Alliance leaders have assured U.S. officials they will take part. ''There is really a hunger for peace,'' said U.S. envoy James Dobbins, after meeting alliance leaders near Kabul.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

Answers

>Otherwise, the U.S. military will have to send in different kinds of forces from the special operations troops

Gulp! The Super Secret Rambo Troops? The possibilities that statement evokes. . .

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

can't we just use more bombs? I'd rather that than risking ground troops.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001

I have a feeling TPTB have weapons/procedures we don't yet know about.

-- Anonymous, November 20, 2001