http://www.boston.com/dailynews/326/world/At_destroyed_camp_glimpse_of_h:.shtml

At destroyed camp, glimpse of how al-Qaida members lived and how some died

By Chris Tomlinson, Associated Press, 11/22/2001 01:28

DARUNTA, Afghanistan (AP) Scattered around the 15-foot-deep craters left by American bombs lay the detritus of one of Osama bin Laden's former terrorist camps: spent anti-aircraft shells, mortar detonators, collapsed buildings and payroll records.

What was once one of the most well-known bin Laden camps is now rubble, pounded by a dozen 1,000-pound bombs. Already, anti-Taliban militiamen have set up machine gun nests at the base.

Nestled in the desert hills 6 miles outside the northeastern city of Jalalabad, the camp was spread out over five barren hilltops, each with a few anti-aircraft guns and artillery pieces to protect it.

The main hill had a stairway leading up it with a panoramic view. Now it ends at a bomb crater where a brick house once stood.

The base was built by the Soviets to protect a hydroelectric dam in the valley below, at one end of a reservoir filled with runoff from a mountain range 35 miles to the west. Bin Laden first arrived at the base in the late 1980s, said Mohammed Omar Kaswar, leader in a nearby village.

''Osama bin Laden was with us here during the jihad against the Russians,'' he said. Bin Laden's al-Qaida network arrived and added more mud brick buildings in 1993, he said, when Arabs loyal to him began arriving with their families.

Bin Laden himself moved to Afghanistan in 1996 a few months before the Taliban seized power in Kabul. Kaswar and leaders of the mujahadeen who fought the Soviets say they fell out with bin Laden when he allied himself with the Taliban.

At its height, the population of the camp Arab and Pakistani fighters, along with their wives and children reached 6,000 people, the villagers said.

Kaswar said the Arabs never entered his village, nor did they allow visitors on the base, encircled with concertina wire. They bought all their supplies in Jalalabad.

The buildings were simple structures, with outdoor kitchens and pit latrines, said Shir Mohammed, a mujahadeen commander whose men now control the Darunta base. Mohammed would visit Darunta before 1996, when the Taliban forced the mujahadeen into the mountains.

''There was a very big house for the Arabs, but it was destroyed by the bombs,'' he said, pointing to bricks and twisted metal near one crater. ''Before the bombing started, the Arabs took their wives and children away from here. Most escaped, but some died.''

Near the old kitchen were empty cans of tomatoes from Russia and clarified butter from a Pakistani aid agency. The weapons were from the former Soviet Union.

A few al-Qaida and Taliban fighters did fire the now-crumpled anti-aircraft guns at the attacking planes when the bombing began Oct. 28, Kaswar said. The bombs shook his mud home more than a mile away, he said.

The Taliban and al-Qaida fighters kept their ammunition in an old Russian van that had long since lost its wheels and engine. But as the bombs dropped, shrapnel sprayed across the compound, punching tiny holes in everything, including a few small trees. The bombs also hurled stones the size of footballs hundreds of yards, covering the compound with dirt and rocks.

Mohammed said villagers found only four dead bodies, but they believe more are buried in the rubble.

Thousands of pages of documents were also left behind, including a payroll ledger with the names and ranks of the men based at Darunta.

One soldier, Nasrullah Ahmed, was paid $50 a month. The papers did not say what country he was from.

There was also a letter, found next to some old syringes, to an Egyptian doctor from his wife, which encouraged him to stay strong and assured her love for him. She cited a verse from the Quran, Islam's holy book, in the letter.

''Fight them until there is no more conflict and all faith goes to God,'' the letter ended.

-- Anonymous, November 22, 2001