![[dDH]](/buttons/buc_ddh.gif){kind=small}
_________
| Nieuwe Oorlog 2002 / Ander Nieuws week 21 |
Doubts raised over al-Qaeda arms cache find Financial Times
May 12 2002
By Jimmy Burns in LondonA series of successes claimed by US-led allied forces in Afghanistan has left more questions than answers about the conduct of the military offensive, say British military sources close to the campaign.
Doubts have been raised about claims that a large arms dump "discovered" by British Royal Marines last week was indeed the largest al-Qaeda arms cache so far found during the coalition campaign.
Amid a deepening "fog of war" familiar to veterans of previous military campaigns, claims by a local British officer that the caves had been used recently were contradicted by the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press agency.
Reflecting scepticism about the find from other military sources within the coalition, the agency claimed that the ammunition and weapons dated back to the Soviet occupation during the 1980s and were not part of Al-Qaeda's arsenal.
But the military sources also suggested that a boast earlier this week by the head of Britain's taskforce in Afghanistan, Brigadier Roger Lane, that the large-scale offensive stage of the war against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces was "all but won" was unwittingly misleading and may have understated the difficulties overshadowing the campaign.
According to these sources, Brigadier Lane privately accepts that the current military offensive is no longer suitable for what in effect has turned into a protracted guerrilla war.
It is thought that the main reason why British Royal Marines have not engaged with the enemy since being sent in as reinforcements is because supporters of the Taliban have temporarily melted into the local civilian population, while many al-Qaeda fighters have moved across the border into tribal areas of Pakistan.
British officials are privately criticising what they consider a lack of understanding by the US administration of the need to engage in social and economic reconstruction in Afghanistan. "The Americans seem to be operating like Swat squads, with one thought in their heads: 'Let's go in and kill those 'ragheads', as they call the enemy," one UK military source said.
The sources say official UK and US briefings have understated the civilian deaths caused by US bombing as well as the human rights violations committed by Afghans claiming the support of the US.