Kismayo is where the Islamist leadership fled after losing Mogadishu, bringing with them their most devout and hard-core fighters.

Huge defections of hard-core fighters into Pakistan have yet to materialize, a senior border guard said today.

Refugees fleeing the northern cities, where fighting in the civil war was heaviest, told of the fearsome 055 Brigade, a group of hard-core foreign fighters assembled to fight the Taliban's toughest battles.

He is thought to be working with dozens of hard-core Islamist fighters, many of them from outside the country, and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.

His sentiments were echoed by the more hard-core fighters in Sarajevo, many of whom are Muslim mercenaries who fought in Croatia before joining the war here.

They didn't seem like radicals or hard-core fighters.

Kismayo is where the Islamist leadership fled after losing Mogadishu, taking their most steadfast and hard-core fighters.

He said he had opened negotiations with those insurgents who were not hard-core fighters and had offered the possibility of amnesty to them.

While he may have only several hundred hard-core fighters, the clan leader has proved that he can draw civilian support in demonstrations.

"It should not surprise any of us that these small groups of very hard-core fighters would attack our people and attempt to destabilize the interim government inside Afghanistan," General Franks said.