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Fighting Not Over, Top Officers Agree
Monday, March 18, 2002
By John F. Burns
The New York Times

But even these officers agree that the overwhelming American firepower deployed taught the enemy a lesson it will not be eager to repeat.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- NYT
American and Afghan officials warned on Sunday that pockets of Taliban and al-Qaida fighters remain in southeastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan, and that new military operations will be needed to defeat them.

American commanders at Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, headquarters for an 11-day battle in the southeastern mountains that ended Wednesday, have eased away from earlier estimates that that battle could prove to be the decisive engagement of the five-month war.

Their position now is that many of the perhaps 1,000 fighters once thought to be surrounded during the first battle, in Shah-e-Kot, may have slipped away as the battle ended, setting the scene for further American-led assaults.
(More: The Albany Tmes Union News Source)
2002 © The New York Times.

Dan