‘Probably the largest’ al-Qaeda training camp ever destroyed in Afghanistan - Washingtonpost

KABUL, Afghanistan — A multi-day operation in southern Afghanistan this month that involved 200 Special Operations forces and scores of American airstrikes targeted what was “probably the largest” al-Qaeda training camp found in the 14-year Afghan war, the senior U.S. commander in Afghanistan said on Friday.

Army Gen. John F. Campbell, the four-star officer in charge of the U.S. war effort, said the camp was used by AQIS, an acronym for al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent. The group’s formation was announced last year by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, and is believed to be based in Pakistan and focused on India, Pakistan and other nations in southern Asia.
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The operation, announced by the U.S. military on Oct. 11, hit one training area that sprawled over 30 square miles and another small one that was about one square mile, U.S. military officials said. U.S. and Afghan troops were involved in the ground assault, with 63 airstrikes launched to cover them. Some 160 al-Qaeda fighters were reported killed.

The training camps were found in Kandahar province’s Shorabak district, a sparsely populated area along Afghanistan’s southern border with Pakistan, and the facilities are believed to have been in existence for up to a year.

That in itself has raised questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. military to find and strike the militants 14 years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks prompted the United States to topple the Taliban and begin hunting al-Qaeda. U.S. officials have long said that only the bare remnants of al-Qaeda remained in Afghanistan, and that they were concentrated in a few valleys in the eastern part of the country.

“It’s a place where you would probably think you wouldn’t have AQ. I would agree with that,” Campbell said of the Kandahar operation, using an acronym for al-Qaeda. “This was really AQIS, and probably the largest training camp-type facility that we have seen in 14 years of war.” - Read More

‘Probably the largest’ al-Qaeda training camp ever destroyed in Afghanistan