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U.S. Grabs at Shadows in Hunt for al Qaeda
Tuesday, September 3, 2002
By Liz Sly
Tribune Foreign Correspondent

"In a strictly military sense we could keep searching and searching and never turn anything up because it is such inhospitable territory," said Sgt. Maj. Dennis Carey, who has overseen operations for conventional troops since November. "The biggest lesson we have learned over here is patience. It's not a technological war. It's a boots-on-the-ground war. It's people manning checkpoints. It's people on patrols. That's what will find them."

KHONI BAGCHA, Afghanistan -- CT
The U.S. Special Forces soldiers who descended upon this Afghan village and stormed their way into the home of Haji Uddin expected to find a meeting of Al Qaeda operatives. Instead, the soldiers encountered a cowering family of mostly women and children jerked from their sleep by the roar and gunfire from American helicopters.

For more than two hours on the night of July 31, the Americans searched the mud-walled compound, smashing doors and breaking the locks on the brightly painted chests that store family valuables.

Uddin was not there. Nor were any Al Qaeda operatives. Instead, the soldiers took away a brother of Uddin, a 14-year-old nephew and three seasonal farmhands who had been sleeping outside.

They left behind a dead man. Niazi Mohammed, 27, a neighbor and father of four who had been in the fields protecting his newly harvested wheat, was hit apparently by mistake when the helicopters opened fire.

And so another day passed in the Afghan installment of the U.S. war against terrorism, another day on which U.S. forces failed to find what they were looking for, but left behind a community in uproar.

A familiar pattern is emerging.

* Bin Laden's fate uncertain
* Confidence in intelligence
* Wooing seems to be working
(More: ChicagoTribune.com News Source)
2002 © The Chicago Tribune.

Dan