Casualties of U.S. Miscalculations

Afghan Victims of CIA Missile Strike Described as Peasants, Not Al Qaeda

By Doug Struck

Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, February 11, 2002; Page A01

ZHAWAR, Afghanistan, Feb. 10 -- Mir Ahmad was a little tall. But he was not Osama bin Laden.

Villagers here in the remote mountains of eastern Afghanistan said Ahmad and two other local men, Daraz and Jahan Gir, were peasants gathering scrap metal from the war in a region of suspected al Qaeda hide-outs. They were killed last Monday when a U.S. Hellfire missile, fired from a CIA-run Predator drone, shrieked down in what was supposed to be an attack on terrorists.

The Pentagon has said the missile was fired on the strength of intelligence suggesting the men were al Qaeda leaders, feeding speculation that a tall man among them might have been bin Laden, the elusive al Qaeda founder who was the main target of the war launched by the Bush administration in Afghanistan on Oct. 7. Since then, however, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials have said they are unsure who was hit.

A Washington Post reporter who reached the remote scene of the attack was held at gunpoint by U.S. soldiers and prevented from entering the site. The soldiers also barred access to the nearby village where Ahmad and the two other men had lived.

"This is an ongoing military operation," said the soldiers' commander, who would not identify himself, after consulting by radio with his superiors. "If you go further, you would be shot."

"We're trying to find out what happened here, too," he added.

The uncertainty over who was killed in the missile attack illustrates the problems facing the United States as it tries to identify and destroy the remnants of an enemy that has slipped into the rugged hills of Afghanistan. More than four months after the start of U.S. airstrikes, U.S. planes are still crossing the skies and unleashing bombs and rockets. But increasingly, Afghans in this area said, the Americans do not really know who they are aiming at, and sometimes hit the wrong targets.

"Who are they talking to?" said Mohammed Ibrahim, governor of Khost province, about 130 miles southeast of Kabul near the border with Pakistan. "They aren't talking to me. They aren't talking to local people. Their intelligence in this area is very weak."

The Hellfire missile attack was the latest incident in which U.S. forces, acting on intelligence often provided by Afghan allies, have delivered deadly strikes only to hear protests later that their targets were innocent.

The CIA has begun paying reparations to victims of a Jan. 24 raid in Uruzgan province that killed 21 people, and 27 Afghans captured in the raid have been released. The head of Afghanistan's interim administration in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, has said U.S. forces similarly misfired in December when they attacked a convoy headed from Khost to Kabul for his inauguration, killing 12. And local villagers have complained that dozens of people from a wedding party, including women and children, were killed when U.S. bombers hit an arms cache Dec. 29 in the hamlet of Qalai Niazi near Gardez.

U.S. forces in Khost are recruiting 400 local fighters -- at $50 apiece to begin -- to help sort out the problems in this region. According to local officials, the fighters will be trained at a small camp of U.S. Special Forces and CIA operatives to comb through the mountains in search of al Qaeda members.

It will be a treacherous task. These mountains are a tableau of craggy peaks and sharp ravines. The terrain disappears in folds and creases, creating innumerable places to hide.

Along a low riverbed trail, for example, an al Qaeda cave once used as a hospital suddenly appears. It would be invisible from the air. But on the ground, the entrance is carefully framed in brick. Inside, the floor is concrete and tunnels connect the cave to three separate entrances.

Some American officials say they believe these hills may hold answers to why more al Qaeda and Taliban fighters were not found after they surrendered the cities of Afghanistan. The officials suspect the fighters melted into the hills and now may be living in caves or hiding in villages in Khost and other remote provinces.

The villages around Khost are nearly inaccessible. To travel from Khost to Zhawar -- sometimes referred to as Zhawar Kili, kili meaning village -- requires a jolting three-hour trek in a rugged vehicle, fording streams, climbing unmarked mountain trails and inching along snowy precipices.

The U.S. soldiers at Zhawar, who were helicoptered in, acknowledged surprise at seeing a visitor: "You must have known some way to get here we didn't know," said one.

Zhawar was used as a training base and a transit point for Taliban supporters on their way to and from Pakistan, just on the other side of the nearest mountains. The Americans believe many of those who were at the camp are still in the area. As a result, U.S. forces have continued to bomb the area regularly.

The bombardment has clearly taken a toll. On a mountaintop near here, all that remains of a Taliban post is a 10-foot hole, where a U.S. missile struck, a few bits of clothing and the straw that was used by the Taliban fighters for shelter.

A woodcutter in the area said Pakistani volunteers manned the post and inhabited houses in the area. In the near distance is a line of mud houses, each neatly collapsed by precise U.S. strikes.

Those who live here agree that it remains a dangerous area. To help a reporter travel to Zhawar, the governor sent along 10 armed escorts. But Mohammad Hakeem, a security chief of the Gorboz district that includes Zhawar and much of these mountains, said he believes the hard-core fighters, including Arabs and Pakistanis, have fled.

The border with Pakistan is porous, he noted, and the Gorboz district abuts a semi-autonomous tribal area of Pakistan, little patrolled by Pakistani soldiers.

"I can be in Pakistan in a half-hour. It's right over that mountain," Hakeem said, gesturing to a nearby peak. "Why would I stay here to get bombed?"

So most of those still in the area are peasants, as was missile victim Mir Ahmad, local officials said. Ahmad and the two others from the nearby village of Gorboz had gone to Zhawar, which had been heavily bombed, to collect scattered munitions and scrap metal to sell in Pakistan, said Zawar Khan, who is from Gorboz.

"I was going past there toward Khost, and I heard the sound of an explosion," he said. "The three were cut in half. They were just poor people trying to get money to feed their families."

Khan said Ahmad had two wives and five children.

The Pentagon has said that an unmanned Predator drone spotted a group of men at Zhawar, and that others seemed to be acting in a deferential manner toward one tall man. U.S. officials have said they received other, unspecified information that the men were al Qaeda leaders before giving approval to fire the missile.

The Pentagon sent soldiers to the area this weekend to investigate the missile strike, but has not disclosed their findings.

Khan said that Ahmad, about 35, was taller than most men here, but estimated his height at about 5 feet 10. Bin Laden is said to be 6 feet 4 to 6 feet 6.

Local security forces said the Americans are depending on unreliable sources. The U.S. base at Khost is guarded by forces of Bacha Khan, a local commander. And while all those in control at Khost are nominally Bacha Khan supporters, they said the Americans are getting information from outsiders or from Bacha Khan's 17-year-old brother, Wazer Khan, who is said to be at the U.S. camp often.

"They don't consult the real locals, who know what the situation is," said the deputy security chief at Khost, Sakhi Jan Wafadar.

As an example, local officials said, two weeks ago they sent a force to Zhawar to check on the results of U.S. bombing there. A U.S. helicopter landed and Special Forces soldiers captured the men, made them lie on the ground and then flew them to Kandahar before acknowledging that they were friendly forces and releasing them.

Attempts to speak to U.S. military officials at the base in Khost were rebuffed. A soldier at the gate of razor wire and sandbags said no officer would speak to a reporter.

The governor, Ibrahim, said he also is turned away at the gate. "It's not possible for me to go there. There's no communication with the Americans," he said. "We are happy that they came, and we are ready to help them. But the people are starting to get angry at them."