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Thousands of al-Qaeda terrorists survived the U.S. military assault in Afghanistan and are beginning to regroup. Last weekend, U.S. forces attacked some 500 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters holed up in the rugged, icy mountains outside the eastern town of Gardez, near the Pakistani border. The targets: four al-Qaeda training camps that were bombed last fall but, sources tell TIME, have since been reoccupied by al-Qaeda. Over the past month, locals say, groups of armed men have moved into the area from the Pakistani border town of Miren-Shah. The latest battle involved at least 1,000 Afghan troops and 60 U.S. Special Forces, who advanced on an al-Qaeda encampment by taking control of roads around Shah-e-Kot. The lead forces were rebuffed by heavily armed al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. U.S. aircraft, including B-52s, F-15Es, F-18s and AC-130 gunships, were called in to fire at enemy positions. At least one American was killed by hostile fire. "This could go on for several days," a Pentagon official said.
As TIME reported in January, Western intelligence officials believe that al-Qaeda may now be under the control of Abu Zubaydah, a peripatetic aide of Osama bin Laden's who has run training camps in Afghanistan and coordinated terror cells in Europe and North America. A European terrorism expert says Zubaydah oversaw the training of 3,000 to 4,000 recruits in al-Qaeda terrorist camps, most of whom are "out there somewhere in the world right now." Zubaydah has instructed operatives to shave their beards, adopt Western clothing and "do whatever it takes to avoid detection and see their missions through," the expert says.
In the past six months, the Administration and Congress have mobilized massive amounts of government money, intelligence and personnel to track terrorists at home and abroad and tighten the country's protective net. But all nets have holes. A TIME investigation found some good news--notably that the CIA, FBI and other intelligence and law-enforcement agencies are finally starting to work as a team. But in other critical areas, such as gathering and analyzing intelligence, strengthening homeland security and rounding up al-Qaeda, the U.S. has yet to solve its most grievous problems. Much of the more than $1 billion that Washington has poured into intelligence services since 9/11 is merely high-octane fuel flooding a leaky and misfiring engine. America's national security system is designed to fight Soviets rather than suicide bombers. Sources in the Pentagon, White House and Congress grumble that the CIA and the nation's other intelligence bureaucracy were caught flat-footed by the Sept. 11 attack--"It was an abject intelligence failure," a White House aide says--and many still doubt that the U.S. intelligence community is capable of seeing the next one coming.