Word: anacondas
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...Bush Administration originally declared Operation Anaconda a victory after al-Qaeda and Taliban forces were battered in the fighting at Shah-i-Kot, near Khost. But the bad guys in Afghanistan keep slipping away. Senior officials in Washington concede that "at least" hundreds of the enemy have crossed into Pakistan, where diplomatic and strategic considerations keep them beyond the reach of U.S. forces. Among the fleeing al-Qaeda, say intelligence sources in Islamabad, may have been Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri. He was reportedly sighted a month ago, near Anaconda's mountainous...
...interested in any notion of "nation building." His military, already looking beyond Afghanistan at the next targets in the war on terror, is even more blunt. "We're here to kill and destroy al-Qaeda," says Sergeant Major Frank Grippe, a 10th Mountain Division ground commander, during Operation Anaconda. "It's that simple." General Tommy Franks, chief of Central Command, tells TIME: "Any evolution beyond that, in terms of support to the Afghan government, to the interim authority, will require a decision by our President, and we have not seen that decision made...
...weeks U.S. forces had been watching as Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters gathered south of Kabul. Code-named Operation Anaconda, the battle plan aimed at this force was a hammer-and-anvil strategy. Friendly Afghans, assisted by U.S. special forces, would flush the enemy from the north and northwest toward three exits of the Shah-i-Kot valley, where American troops waited. To the south, battle positions Heather and Ginger were divided by a hill christened the Whale, while to the east, battle position Eve guarded escape routes over the high mountains to Pakistan. But after two days of fierce...
...battle from MacDill Air Force Base, 7,700 miles from Kabul. The command center at MacDill monitors all the intelligence from the region and beams Franks' orders to his field generals. Last week he directed the largest fight of the war so far. A few days before Operation Anaconda began, Centcom gave TIME photographer Christopher Morris a rare opportunity to capture the action...
...Operation Anaconda also produced some significant shifts in the U.S. approach to battle in Afghanistan. Until now, the "Afghanistan model" in Washington parlance had involved small numbers of U.S. special forces on the ground directing awesome U.S. air power and Afghan proxy infantry. That model proved effective in putting the Taliban to flight from Afghanistan's major cities. It was less successful in last December's standoff at Tora Bora, where thousands of al Qaeda-linked fighters appear to have escaped what had been presented as a ring of steel...