KORANGAL VALLEY (Afghanistan): At night, the forested mountains are on fire from the relentless artillery strikes. By day, gunbattles echo around the valley. Five years after the Sept 11 attacks on America, the New York-based 10th Mountain Division is still fighting militant supporters of Al Qaeda — whose leaders hatched their deadliest terror plot in this forsaken corner of eastern Afghanistan.
Only about 100 hardcore Afghan, Arab and Pakistani insurgents operate in the remote Korangal Valley in Kunar province, but this is where the US last year suffered its worst combat loss in Afghanistan and where the military believes at least second-tier Al Qaeda leaders hide and plan attacks.
“From all the areas we have been through, this one is the most active,” said Capt. Michael Schmidt, 30, from Maryland, as his M-16 assault rifle rested in the carved out hole in the bunker overlooking a village where US troops on Sunday killed at least two insurgents.
“There are a lot of bad guys in this valley.”
At the end of August, the US Army launched Operation Big Northern Wind to wipe out the militants in the Korangal Valley and expand the control of the Afghan government — part of a drive by 20,000 coalition forces here to secure the volatile frontier with Pakistan.
It takes place against a turbulent backdrop. Afghanistan is facing its worst period of instability and violence since the Taliban regime was toppled by US-led forces for hosting Osama bin Laden.
Near the main southern city of Kandahar, where a newly deployed NATO force is taking the fight to a resurgent Taliban, the alliance said its air strikes and artillery had killed 94 militants overnight and early Sunday, pushing the reported toll from a nine-day counterinsurgency operation there past 420 — probably the most intense military confrontation in Afghanistan in nearly five years.
Two US-led coalition soldiers also died in combat in the south late Saturday. Five NATO soldiers and 14 British crew of a reconnaissance plane have also died there in the past week.
Also Sunday, a suicide bombing, claimed by the Taliban, killed the governor of eastern Paktia province, and the US military warned that a suicide bombing cell was operating in Kabul, with the aim of targeting foreign troops. One such attack on Friday killed 16 people, including two American soldiers, near the US Embassy.
In the Korangal Valley, the terrain is more rugged than the arid, expansive deserts around Kandahar. The army is fighting a classic counterinsurgency of the kind last waged by US forces during the Vietnam War, said Capt. Robert Stanton, 31, of Tampa, Florida.
Operation commander Lt. Col. Christopher Cavoli, 42, in charge of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, said the aim is to put military pressure on the insurgents and political pressure on their supporters in local villages and so extend the reach of the government.
But for the troops of the 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum, New York, this is also about punishing Al Qaeda for the Sept 11 attacks on America.
“The people here that we are fighting are direct descendants or were at some point in time directly involved in terrorist attacks on America,” said Stanton.
“We were told that Osama bin Laden and his group operated freely up here ... conducted training and planning activity and that this was where the plans for Sept 11 were hatched.”
Stanton would not give further details of the source of the information, but military intelligence officials say that these high, pine-covered mountains in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan province remain a command and control centre for second- and third-tier Al Qaeda leaders.
They say the plot foiled last month in London to blow up US-bound jetliners was probably hatched in the Aranas area in Nuristan. Pakistani intelligence have also claimed that an Al Qaeda mastermind in eastern Afghanistan was behind the conspiracy.
The US military action to snuff out the militants here is intense.
There are almost daily fire-fights with small bands of militants — who blend in quickly with the local people — and deafening barrages of artillery that scorch the mountainsides, setting trees on fire.
Mortar rounds and 155 mm howitzers blasted the hilltops on Sunday above the village of Darbart from where insurgents fired machine-guns and rocket propelled grenades on troops conducting searches in the village.
Troops traded machine gun fire for nearly an hour with the insurgents, until 120 mm mortars hit a house from where at least two of the militants were firing. The two were presumed killed. No US soldiers were hurt.
“The enemy up here is very well trained,” Stanton said. “They are very, very hard to find because most of them have support from some of the locals.”
The district governor has slapped sanctions against the southern section of the valley — where most of the militants are believed to come from and where foreign fighters linked to Al Qaeda still can find sanctuary in caves, mountains huts and the dozen or so villages that dot the valley. The military says the local Korangali tribe is a key link to Al Qaeda and other Islamic militants operating here. The tribe adheres to the austere Wahabi brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia, and practiced by the fugitive Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.—AP
