Afghanistan 'A Very Dangerous Place'

The resistance shown by the Taliban since U.S. forces drove it from power in Afghanistan shows the war on terrorism won't be won anytime soon, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Tuesday.

"Afghanistan is still a very dangerous place," Gen. Richard B. Myers told reporters before a speech he delivered in Detroit. "It would be dangerous to underestimate how organized they (Taliban and al Qaeda) are."

Army troops participating in the campaign against al Qaeda and Taliban fighters regrouping in eastern Afghanistan have found weapons, medical equipment and high-quality cold-weather gear, he said.

The American military presence in Afghanistan will remain at current levels for at least several more months, Myers said.

"Progress in this kind of war is sometimes hard to measure and difficult to communicate," the Air Force general said.

But Myers cited earlier claims by Bush Administration officials that since Sept. 11, 70 foreign governments have detained some 1,300 people with alleged ties to al Qaeda, 20 nations have committed more than 16,000 troops to the global anti-terrorism effort, and more than $104 million in financial assets linked to the Taliban and al Qaeda have been blocked worldwide.

"The first thing you can do is be patient," Myers said. "This is going to take time. This is going to take years."

Myers said the military had the resources to carry out any mission of any size requested of it by President Bush.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing Monday that the U.S. military hasn't tracked down Osama bin Laden during its six-month war in Afghanistan, but it has made it harder for his al Qaeda terrorist network to operate — and that's better than nothing.

U.S. officials say there has been little or no sign of bin Laden since December. There is speculation that he escaped into Pakistan or another country, he remains in Afghanistan or he is dead.

"My feeling is that he's probably still alive and still in the region," Myers said.

Rumsfeld said U.S. forces are focusing on cave complexes and other former al Qaeda hide-outs and fortifications in eastern Afghanistan. The troops are scouring these areas for clues to terrorist plans.

In related war news Tuesday, Pentagon officials and military analysts said the U.S. air campaign over Afghanistan has been perhaps the most accurate bombing ever.

Early evaluations from the 6-month-old war have shown as many as 75 percent to 80 percent of U.S. bombs hit their targets, military officials said. They cautioned, however, that preliminary assessments often significantly inflate the percentage of targets hit.

If the early data hold, the Afghanistan bombing would be much more accurate than in the 1991 Gulf War or the 1999 bombing of Serbia, where less than half of the bombs hit their intended targets, the officials said.

"This is by far the most accurate bombing campaign ever," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute. "What the Air Force and Navy are doing today with smart bombs is the realization of a dream."

One reason is for the first time, most of the bombs dropped have been guided to their targets by lasers or satellites. About 60 percent of the bombs dropped on Afghanistan were guided, compared with less than 10 percent of Gulf War bombs.

Another reason is that special forces units on the ground in Afghanistan have been able to guide pilots to their targets. The commandos can either point a laser at a target, which a guided bomb locks onto, or tell a pilot a target's precise coordinates to enter into a satellite-guided bomb.

Asked about the report, Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters "it is way too soon" to determine precisely how accurate the bombing campaign in Afghanistan has been.

"It's greater accuracy, but I sure wouldn't put a number on it at this date," Clarke said.

In Afghanistan, interim Prime Minister Hamid Karzai promised Tuesday to rebuild two towering ancient Buddha statues, calling their destruction "a national tragedy." The Taliban blew up the statues a year ago.

Funding the project will be no small task for this nation's bankrupt administration. But Karzai said rebuilding the statues was part of reconstructing Afghanistan, a nation devastated by war for over two decades.

"The loss of life is something irreparable. You cannot repair that," Karzai said during a five-hour visit to Bamiyan, where the statues are located. "But we're going to work on this and we hope we can have it rebuilt as soon as possible."

The fundamentalist Taliban considered the statues "idolatrous" and against the tenets of Islam, so the militia dynamited them a year ago despite an international outcry.

Karzai's visit also was significant for the Hazaras, an ethnic minority who comprise 10 percent of Afghanistan's population but are a majority in Bamiyan. As followers of Islam's Shiite branch, they also are a religious minority.

Three mass graves believed to be filled with the bodies of Hazaras killed by the Taliban were discovered recently in Bamiyan.

Karzai promised his administration would do all it could to protect Afghanistan's minorities, including the Hazaras.

The Hazaras say as many as 15,000 of their people were slaughtered in killings orchestrated by the Taliban. The city changed hands several times during Taliban rule, but thousands of Hazaras eventually were forced to flee, their houses burned to the ground by Taliban soldiers.

In other developments Tuesday: