November 5, 2001	Monday	haba’an 18, 1422

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KOHAT, Nov 4: United States fighter planes are continuing attacks and reconnaissance missions in the Aryub Jaji area in the Paktia province of Afghanistan, 260km west from here, with six-hour pauses to cut off arms and ammunition supplies to the Taliban frontline from the three ammunition depots — Spina Shaga, Gora Tanday and Gaey — located astride the Pak-Afghan border in the Kurram Agency, an army intelligence source told Dawn on Sunday.

The Gora Tanday town in Afghanistan, which is situated 400 feet up from the border town of Teri Mengal in the Kurram Agency, and the Gaey village were attacked by the US jets, resulting in serious injuries to two elderly Afghans last week.

The source said the injured were under treatment at the Shasho Hospital run by a foreign NGO in Sadda tehsil of the Kurram Agency, and that nobody was allowed to meet them.

He confirmed that two bombs had fallen inside the “Pakistani territory” as mentioned by the media, but in fact it was no man’s land.

According to the source, during the Afghan-USSR war and even after that those three points served as strong bases of Abdur Rab Rasool Sayyaf, who was the main beneficiary of all the aid provided by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, and Hizbe Islami chief Gulbadin Hekmatyar, who would get a lion’s share from the US military aid (from a match box to helicopters) for almost two decades.

He said the long and safe tunnels in the mountains of the areas had storage facilities for huge quantities of arms and ammunition and were still teaming with it.

Commenting on the air strikes on the areas, he said caves, which served as ammunition depots, were strong enough and the high mountains served as guards as planes could not dive to hit them with precision and accuracy. He added that they could be only destroyed by ground forces while the US was trying to only stop supplies to Taliban forces and every moving objects in the area came under attack.

Hekmatyar told this correspondent during a visit to Spina Shaga in the autumn of 1996 that the Taliban, who knew that the area contained long ammunition dumps, had not attacked it while sweeping 90 per cent of Afghanistan and that he (Hekmatyar) had peacefully handed over the areas to the Taliban to avoid any catastrophe, which might have occurred if the “gates” of those dumps had been hit unintentionally.

An Afghan businessman, Daud, who returned from the area on Saturday, told Dawn that the residents of Teri Mengal, who knew that the nearby mountains were like “live and ready bombs” and could cause heavy damage in case they were hit by the US planes, were fleeing the area and settling in safer parts of the agency.

He said the Afghans on the other side of the border were living in very inhuman conditions and “now when the bombardment on the area has started, Pakistani authorities should allow them to come to Pakistan on humanitarian grounds.”

Replying to a question, he said there were hardly 50 Taliban in the area, who had been assigned with the duty to guard the ammunition dumps and to ensure unhindered supply to the central Afghanistan through traditional means and channels.

As the US strikes were aimed at wiping out the Taliban, many of the former jihadi groups were not taking part in the war and were waiting for Taliban’s downfall to display their strength of men and money during the formation of a broad-based government, he said and added that they had helicopters, tanks, APCs and stringers hidden in the large caves excavated during the war with Russia and among themselves.

As the mouths of the caves opened towards Pakistan, the defence ministry had deputed personnel of the inter-services intelligence to guard those areas against any terrorist act and had established a full-fledged permanent base in Parachinar directly controlled from the regional headquarters in Peshawar for the first time.

ISI personnel usually enter Afghanistan to keep an eye on the anti-Taliban and anti-Pakistan elements among the Afghan population.

Earlier, the Kurram Agency was controlled from Kohat even during the extremely sensitive period of the USSR aggression.