#6
Glasgow Herald (UK)
23 November 2001
Russia gives vital maps to CIA
IAN BRUCE
Spetznaz experience passed to US troops
MOSCOW has supplied maps of cave complexes in south and east Afghanistan to the CIA to help in the intensifying manhunt for Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terror network lieutenants.
The maps were drawn up from surveys carried out by the GRU, the Red Army's intelligence arm, during the 10-year Soviet occupation of the country which ended in 1989, after a bitter, guerrilla war which cost the USSR more than 15,000 dead.
Although tunnels and bunkers have been improved and possibly extended since then, bin Laden's organisation and the ruling Taliban regime are still believed to rely on the basic underground infrastructure which provided a degree of shelter, security from air attack and locations for hidden arms caches through a decade of conflict against the Soviet invaders.
Russia has also passed on advice based on the combat experience of its own Spetznaz special forces in tackling the Afghan mujahideen in the rugged terrain of the Hindu Kush range, which dominates two-thirds of the country.
A Pentagon source, confirming Moscow's cooperation yesterday, said: "We are grateful for the hands-on input from Russia. Intelligence is flooding in from sources ranging from paid local informers to friendly security services to hi-tech electronic assets.
"Moscow's contribution is particularly useful. Until we take bin Laden out, this is, essentially, an information war."
US and British special forces, guided by former Taliban fighters who have now switched sides, are concentrating the search in mountains east of Kandahar, the regime's political and spiritual stronghold, and around Tora Bora east of Jalalabad, close to the frontier with Pakistan.
Both sectors are also under scrutiny by unmanned surveillance drones, orbiting KH11 Keyhole satellites, and reconnaissance aircraft understood to include RAF Nimrods and US Awacs which can detect movement on the ground over a 250-mile radius....
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