WASHINGTON – An al Qaeda terror camp where scientists are believed to be working on chemical weapons, as well as the Taliban’s heroin-production facilities, will be among the first targets hit when the shooting war starts, The Post has learned.
U.S. military planners, working with Russian and Pakistani intelligence agencies as well as anti-Taliban rebels in Northern Afghanistan, have quietly drawn up a list of hundreds of potential targets for airstrikes and search-and-destroy missions in the early phases of the war on Osama bin Laden’s empire of terrorism.
Bush administration officials insist that final decisions have not yet been made, pointing out that mapping out strategy against a mobile enemy hiding in caves and tunnels in a mountainous country with few big “strategic targets” is an immense undertaking.
But the Pentagon, which is mobilizing the largest attack force since the Persian Gulf War, is expected to aim much of the U.S. firepower at the Kandahar and Jalalabad regions in southern Afghanistan.
That’s where the bulk of bin Laden’s terror infrastructure is.
U.S. officials expect to strike a bin Laden terror camp where they believe experiments have used chemical and biological weapons.
That suspicion is backed up by recent satellite photos that show hundreds of dead animals outside.
The Taliban maintains scores of heroin and opium production facilities throughout the country that are likely targets of air and ground attacks.
“Targeting those facilities makes a lot of sense, because not only do we cut off a primary source of funding for the Taliban, but it helps in … the p.r. effort to paint this regime as a criminal enterprise that is doing very un-Islamic things,” said Peter Singer, military analyst for the Brookings Institution.
The White House said yesterday that it’s not seeking to replace the Taliban with another government.
But administration officials concede that hundreds of strategic and tactical targets of the Taliban, including radio stations, government buildings and military installations, are on the Pentagon’s hit list.
Bin Laden is believed to have his own small fleet of planes, which could also be targeted.