November 27, 2001
DEBKAfile's Indian Subcontinent
Intelligence Sources:
Pakistan Chartered Antonov Transports
to Secretly Lift Bulk of Al Qaeda Force from Konduz to Pakistan
US Marines Were Brought in to Block
Continuing Al Qaeda-Taliban Exodus from Kandahar to Pakistan
27 November - While US troops scour
the mountains and caves for Osama bin Laden, the bulk of his al Qaeda army
has also disappeared. It was found to be missing when the Northern Alliance
seized control of the northern Taliban enclave of Konduz-Khanabad on Monday,
November 26.
Roughly 1,500 of bin Laden's men
are reported still holding out outside Konduz. A similar number is unaccounted
for.
First the figures:
At the peak of the battle of Konduz,
Northern Alliance spokesmen estimated that 10,000 ''foreign fighters''
were in the town, a figure which DEBKAfile 's military experts rate an
exaggeration. The true figure was no more than 6,000. It included several
thousand young student volunteers from the Islamic medressas (Islamic academies)
of Pakistan, who were told to go and fight America with very little army
training or weapons but for their blind hero-worship of the ex-Saudi terrorist.
However, mixed among these eager
students, were several hundred Pakistani army officers and soldiers in
civilian dress, as well as some 120 Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence,
ISI service agents, representing Pakistan's secret intelligence and logistical
support for the Taliban.
Most reached Afghanistan before
the American offensive was launched on October 7; some entered later and,
in a bizarre twist of the Afghanistan war, may even have given US special
forces useful inside intelligence on the Taliban and al Qaeda.
According to DEBKAfile's military
experts, 3000 of these men, some injured, were evacuated from Konduz in
a secret nocturnal Pakistani airlift, run before the Taliban enclave fell
to the Northern Alliance.
Left therefore in the Konduz-Khanabad
sector were no more than 3000-3500 al Qaeda fighting men, roughly the same
number present before the siege of Konduz. Around 500 or 600 surrendered
last week - together with a group of Taliban fighters who switched over
to General Dostum's Uzbek force - only to engage their captors in a suicide
battle in a fortress-prison near Mazar-e-Sharif. Several hundred were killed
in the fighting, but they also killed at least one American agent and injured
a group of US special forces troops.
After that batch is deducted, a
total of 2,500 to 3,000 at most should have been found in the Konduz-Khanabad
sector - Saudis, Gulf Arabs, Egyptians, Jordanians, Somalis, Yemenis, Chechens
and Palestinians. Intelligence estimates before the Konduz siege put the
Saudi extremist component fighting with al Qaeda at 500-700. That is roughly
the missing number, over whose whereabouts speculation is rife.
DEBKAfile groups the various surmises
under four main headings:
A. Correspondents who entered
Konduz with the Northern Alliance quoted local inhabitants as reporting
that two nights before the town fell - and immediately after the Pakistani
planes flew in - heavy Russian Antonov air transports touched down at Konduz
airport and gathered up the al Qaeda ''Arabs'' - with their weapons.
DEBKAfile's military sources, after
checking on this lead with army intelligence sources in the Indian subcontinent,
present this explanation of the mystery as the most plausible. Those Antonovs
were chartered by the Pakistani ISI to lift the al Qaida contingents together
with a few Taliban units out of Konduz in north Afghanistan into north
Pakistan.
Their landings were masked by the
US-authorized flights extricating the Pakistani combatants and therefore
went undetected.
And that was not the end of the
transfer. It is still going on. Our sources report that al Qaeda and their
Taliban allies are streaming out of Kandahar in the south and crossing
east into Pakistan. The two forces have thus far grouped some 4000 fighting
men on the Pakistani side. According to DEBKAfile's intelligence sources,
the United States hurriedly injected Marines to the south on Monday in
direct response to the enemy's redeployment. That too is why the first
US troop engagement was with a Taliban convoy approaching the Pakistani
frontier. For the US Marines' immediate objective is not to join the Northern
Alliance offensive for the capture of Mullah Omar's bastion of Kandahar,
but to block off the continuing passage of Taliban and al Qaeda units across
the highly porous frontier.
B. They took advantage of the turmoil
and confusion of battle to creep away to the Hindu KushMountains. There
is no evidence of this happening, but it accords with their commanders'
original plan; if it came to be, the suicide battle in Mazar-e-Sharif prison
will not the last to be staged in Afghanistan.
B. The Tajik warlord Mohamed Daud
of the Northern Alliance encircled the al Qaeda contingent and slaughtered
its members then and there - or after taking them prisoner.
Whichever theory turns out to be
fact, bin Laden and the Taliban leader Mullah Omar clearly remain operationally
viable.
But questions must be asked about
the operational capabilities of the Northern Alliance. If their siege of
Konduz was as effective as described, why did they fail to prevent a max
exodus of enemy troops?
For a realistic summing up of the
last ten days' successful battles against the Taliban and al Qaeda, DEBKAfile's
military sources point out that the 15,000- strong Northern Alliance could
never have pulled off these complex feats on their own. Their tanks may
proudly fly their green-and-white flags, but Russian special forces generals,
in command of ethnic Uzbek and Tajik fighters, managed the Northern Alliance
tank war in close conjunction with US special forces.
