13 December 2001
Afghans Say U.S. Scuttled Surrender - Commanders Cite Pressure To Keep Attacking Al Qaeda 
Susan B. Glassner
Washington Post

As many as 40 U.S. Special Forces troops and 60 members of Britain's elite Special Air Service are on the ground in the rugged area, helping in the hunt for bin Laden and any of his lieutenants who remain.

Afghan commanders said the Americans, in pressing their Afghan allies for a new attack, had promised that U.S. and British special forces would take a broader role in the battle. But in Washington, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that U.S. troops would continue to focus on supporting opposition commanders and calling in airstrikes, not directly attacking al Qaeda fighters or searching caves.

Pentagon officials disputed claims that Americans operating in the field had scuttled surrender arrangements. "We've never seen any serious talks to begin with," a senior official said.

Today's airstrikes came during an ostensible cease-fire negotiated between a top Afghan commander, Mohammed Zaman Ghun Shareef, and bin Laden's forces after two days of intense fighting pushed the bin Laden troops high into the mountains. They abandoned many of their heavily fortified caves and bunkers lower in the mountain range's Tora Bora area and neighboring Milawa Valley.

The cease-fire had been set to culminate in their surrender at 8 a.m. local time today. Instead, the deadline passed with no surrender. Several Afghan leaders said today that Americans in the area had adamantly resisted terms of the deal, which would have allowed bin Laden's mainly Arab and other foreign fighters to hand themselves over to the United Nations and diplomatic representatives of their own countries. "The Americans won't accept their surrender," Hazrat Ali, regional security chief for eastern Afghanistan, said after emerging from hours of negotiations with U.S. officials. "They want to kill them."

Ali said bin Laden's fighters wanted to surrender "to us or the United Nations," a condition unacceptable to the Americans, adding that "no country in the world wants to accept" any bin Laden troops seeking safe passage home. (..)

The officials said U.S. forces are not insisting that the al Qaeda forces be killed. Surrender or death in combat are both acceptable outcomes from the U.S. point of view, an official in Washington said, adding, "I don't know that there is a preference, as long as we get them."

A refusal to accept an unconditional surrender would violate the law of war, said Peter Choharis, who practices international law in Washington at the firm Mayer, Brown & Platt. But he said his experience in dealing with the U.S. military leads him to believe that isn't the case. He added that the United States has every right to reject surrender offers that carry conditions.

By late afternoon today, the Afghan leaders said they had set a new deadline of Thursday morning for the al Qaeda fighters to give up, but said they would not accept their surrender unless top leaders of the group, including bin Laden himself, also turned themselves in. Several sources said the Afghan leaders continued negotiations by radio today with al Qaeda representatives, even as they were closeted in hours of talks with Americans. (..)

"The Americans were strongly pressuring us," said an Afghan participant, who asked not to be identified. "In the end, the commanders agreed, but reluctantly" to press the attack against al Qaeda, the participant said. "But we told them: 'The Americans have to go to the front now themselves. They must fight as well.' " In the end, the two sides agreed that the U.S. and British special forces "will fight together with the mujaheddin now on the ground." (..)

It remains unclear how serious the al Qaeda promise to surrender was. People close to Ali said the Arabs had never really planned to abandon their mountain stronghold. But factions allied with Zaman, who negotiated the cease-fire, insisted angrily today that the surrender had been a done deal until the renewed U.S. bombing. "It's not good manners to stop a cease-fire," said Amin Jan, a field commander reporting to Zaman. "The bombardment cost us the surrender." Zaman himself was so angered by the bombing that he pleaded with the Americans during the night to stop the airstrikes but did not succeed, according to several of his commanders. (..)