Afghanistan: One Year Later

The chow hall at Bagram Air Base served scrambled eggs and slightly overdone hash browns. The shower was running hot and cold again, and thick Afghan dust gummed up the generators.

Monday, the first anniversary of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan, was just another day in what has become a low-intensity conflict, with routine raids, small caches of ammunition seized, and a few unremarkable suspects taken into custody.

"It's been a year, really?" said Pfc. Thomas Corbin of Traverse City, Michigan as he swept the kitchen at the 82nd Airborne Division's hangar. "Out here, sometimes I don't even remember what month it is."

But despite the lowered intensity, Afghan officials say they want and need the Americans to stay. The troops should remain until "we all believe the situation is stable enough, and al Qaeda is not a threat anymore to stability in Afghanistan or elsewhere," Foreign Minister Dr. Abdullah said Monday. "One cannot give a timetable."

And the government still needs help reining in control in the provinces, where many still feel allegiance to al Qaeda and the hardline Taliban regime. In Kandahar, a cemetery honoring at least 43 al Qaeda fighters who died during the first year of fighting has taken on a mythical status, and several Afghans spent part of the anniversary on a pilgrimage to the dusty site.

Mohammad Ismail, a mechanic who regularly visits the graveyard, said he was lured by stories he heard saying a visit to the site had helped physically and mentally disabled people recover.

He said his frequent trips to the graveyard were also intended to show his disgust with the current government.

"It was established by the Americans," he said. "We do not believe in them because they are non-Muslims and they do not accept the law which the holy Quran taught us."

When the war began one year ago — on Oct. 7, 2001 — Bagram was near the front lines of fighting between the then-ruling Taliban militia and the ragtag U.S.-backed Northern Alliance. Land mines made the former Soviet base so dangerous that even the dogs stayed away. Destroyed Russian planes cluttered the airfield.

"When I got here they were still using old MiG engines for roadblocks," said Rajesh Dewani, a civilian contractor who arrived in December.

Since then, the base has grown into a small international city, with British, Australian, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Polish and Norwegian enclaves. The PX now sells Playstation games and CDs to bored soldiers. MPs, once solely concerned with attacks from the outside, give out the occasional traffic ticket and confiscate beer.

Horrific booms still shake the buildings, but they're set off by machines designed to detonate mines and clear the fields. On Thursday night there was some gunfire beyond the gates, but officers said they thought it was just a rowdy party.

The action has shifted elsewhere, to smaller bases closer to the Pakistani border. Even there, the mission has lost some of its urgency.

Conventional Army forces have taken over many missions from the special forces, and officials in Washington say some 2,000 are now sweeping eastern provinces. Caches of weapons and ammunition are still found, but few high-ranking al Qaeda arrests have been reported.

Amid the routine, though, there are still some unexpected problems. On Monday, the military said a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier was thrown from his all-terrain vehicle and suffered a possible neck injury. The accident happened Sunday near Orgun, about 100 miles south of Kabul near the Pakistani border.

The soldier was taken to Bagram and flown out to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

During the year, Bagram has become more of a logistics hub. Reservists took over some jobs from the active military, and now private contractors are beginning to assume duties like cooking meals and doing the laundry.

Many soldiers remember what they were doing when the war began. One, 1st Lt. Mike Starkey of Olympia, Washington, an Apache helicopter pilot, said he learned about the attacks when a speaker announced them at a Mormon church conference.

Army Col. Roger King had taken his first day off since Sept. 11. "I was watching the snow in upstate New York dust the deck out back," he said. "I made the mistake of taking my beeper with me."

The military now says it is focusing on training an Afghan national army to replace the patchwork of militias around the country. The Army doesn't expect to have a large permanent presence here to hunt al Qaeda — King, the spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, estimated it would stay 1 1/2 years, at most. But he said the U.S. military would likely continue to play some role in the country.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld pledged anew Monday that the U.S. will track down Osama bin Laden and other top leaders of his al Qaeda terrorist network.

"If they are alive and well, we'll eventually find them," Rumsfeld said during a news briefing. He said he was not frustrated that bin Laden remains on the loose. Top al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have learned how to
conceal themselves from U.S. surveillance, he said.

An audiotape aired Sunday by the Arab satellite television station Al-Jazeera includes a voice, said to be bin Laden's, warning of more violence against America. Rumsfeld said he did not know if the tape was of bin Laden, adding that there were no indications of when the tape was made.

"So I have still, to this moment, not seen anything since last December that one can with certainty say that he's alive or functioning," Rumsfeld said. "So he's therefore either alive and well, or alive and not too well, or not alive."

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan has met many of its goals, Rumsfeld said, which included ousting the Taliban, scattering the al Qaeda and making sure Afghanistan is no longer a haven for terrorists. The 90-nation coalition in the war on terrorism is the largest ever, Rumsfeld said.

The war in Afghanistan has claimed 39 American lives, including 16 during combat or other hostile situations. About 10,000 U.S. soldiers remain in Afghanistan, hunting for terrorists and helping the interim government of President Hamid Karzai.