Special Forces Open Ground Campaign Small Numbers Are Said to Be Operating to Aid CIA Effort in Southern Afghanistan

By Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, October 19, 2001; Page A1

U.S. Special Forces have begun the ground phase of America's war against terrorism in Afghanistan, operating in small numbers in southern Afghanistan in support of the CIA's effort in the Taliban heartland, defense officials said yesterday.

Their presence on the battlefield comes amid growing indications that the war's intensity is about to increase dramatically after 11 days of U.S. and British airstrikes that Pentagon officials say have pummeled the defenses of the Taliban regime's militia.

The number of U.S. personnel on the ground is just a handful now and is unlikely to ever resemble the large conventional forces assembled in the Persian Gulf War a decade ago, defense officials said. But their presence marks a turning point in only the second week of the conflict, heightening the risk to U.S. forces and underscoring the seriousness of the Bush administration's commitment to prosecuting its war against terrorism.

The new Special Forces mission in southern Afghanistan is designed to expand an ongoing CIA effort to encourage ethnic Pashtun leaders to break away from the Taliban militia, a senior defense official said.

But another official said additional Special Forces are likely to be deployed soon, and could take on other missions such as reconnaissance, target designation for aircraft and, on rare occasions, direct attacks on Taliban or terrorist leaders.

Disclosure of the new Special Forces mission came on a day when a number of prominent officials commented on the inevitability of ground groups.

In London, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has been President Bush's closest ally in the campaign, said "the next few weeks will be the most testing time but we are on track to achieve the goals we set out." He added: "I don't think we have ever contemplated this being done by air power alone."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, declined to comment on the presence of Special Forces in Afghanistan "until we have an activity that is significant and noticeable." But Rumsfeld noted that aircraft "cannot really do sufficient damage. . .‚. They can't crawl around on the ground and find people."

Joining Rumsfeld, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added: "We are prepared to use the full spectrum of our military capabilities. Obviously, that's not just bombers, that's just not carrier-based aircraft; that's other assets as well. We talked earlier about Special Forces."

Myers concluded with a direct appeal to all U.S. military forces and the American people. "I firmly believe that this is the most important task that the U.S. military has been handed since the Second World War," said Myers, who as a fighter pilot flew 600 combat hours over Vietnam. "And what's at stake here is no less than our freedom to exist as an American people. . .‚. So to every soldier, sailor, airmen, Marine, and Coast Guardsmen, and DOD civilian, and our allies and friends, I say, 'Let's stay ready, let's stay focused.'‚"

As Myers and Rumsfeld hinted at the impending ground war, EC-130 "Commando Solo" psychological operations aircraft broadcast instructions to civilians to follow when U.S. troops arrive: "Attention! People of Afghanistan, United States forces will be moving through your area," according to transcripts released by the Pentagon.

"We are here for Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and those who protect them! Please, for your own safety, stay off bridges and roadways, and do not interfere with our troops or military operations. If you do this, you will not be harmed."

The Bush administration holds bin Laden and al Qaeda, the global extremist network he commands, responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The Taliban, Afghanistan's ruling militia, has harbored bin Laden and supported his infrastructure since bin Laden was expelled from Sudan in 1996.

In northern Afghanistan, sources with the Northern Alliance opposition group said yesterday that U.S. military officers arrived on Wednesday aboard two helicopters to hold meetings with Gen. Rashid Dostum, an ethnic Uzbek warlord fighting the Taliban, the Associated Press reported. U.S. military officials have said since the war began Oct. 7 that Army Special Forces have been operating in northern Afghanistan to coordinate with the Northern Alliance, a coalition comprised primarily of ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks.

In addition to Special Forces, a senior defense official said the Pentagon has a number of innovative actions planned for Afghanistan and other countries that harbor terrorists. "There are going to be some things that will surprise you – weapons that people don't know we have," he said.

These weapons, he said, would be akin to the armed drone – a Predator reconnaissance aircraft newly equipped with Hellfire antitank missiles – that the United States is using for the first time over Afghanistan.

Other defense officials have said they expect a large and visible helicopter assault involving Special Forces aviation units aboard the USS Kitty Hawk in the Arabian Sea and in bases in Uzbekistan, just north of Afghanistan. British special forces are also expected to operate on the ground in Afghanistan, an informed source said.

Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, chief of the Central Command that oversees the Afghanistan campaign, is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia next week to review progress of the war, Pentagon officials said.

As the war moved through its 12th day, U.S. warplanes continued hitting targets, bombing around Kabul, the capital, and the cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad, witnesses said.

Northern Alliance commanders, speaking from Mahmoud-e Raqi in northern Afghanistan, 30 miles north of Kabul, said they are prepared to advance on the capital but would wait until an agreement is reached on a coalition government to replace the Taliban.

More than 200 miles to the north, fighting continued around Mazar-e Sharif, where Taliban forces are attempting to halt a drive by Northern Alliance fighters to capture the important crossroad city.

"It's back and forth, and if there were any gains, it would be on the side of the Taliban," one defense official said at the Pentagon.

Taliban officials, speaking in Kabul and Dubai, claimed that from 400 to 900 civilians had been killed in the airstrikes but said that their leaders and the leaders of al Qaeda, including bin Laden, were safe.

Despite those assertions, a group based in London, the Islamic Observation Center, reported that an al Qaeda member with ties to the group's senior leaders, known as Abu Baseer al-Masri, had been killed, apparently as the result of an airstrike.

In Cairo, Reuters obtained a statement by Mohammed Atef, a former Egyptian policeman described by terrorism experts as al Qaeda's military commander, saying that U.S. forces would be driven from Afghanistan as they were from Somalia in 1993. "The calculations of the crusade coalition were very mistaken when it thought it could wage a war on Afghanistan, achieving victory swiftly," Atef said.

At the Pentagon briefing, Rumsfeld and Myers denied Taliban claims that hundreds of civilians have died and said that the U.S. airstrikes have been precise, except for a bomb that went off course and killed four civilians in a house in Kabul.

"When television says we're bombing Kabul, we're not bombing Kabul," Rumsfeld said. "We may take out a single location in Kabul, but most of the effort is on the outskirts of Kabul in unpopulated areas and military targets."

Myers disputed Taliban claims that 18 people were killed when a bomb struck a bus in Kandahar. U.S. military analysts, he said, "have looked at that very hard in the area that they said the bus was in. They've looked at the targets we struck in that area, and we can find no evidence that the bombs were anywhere other than where they were supposed to go, and no evidence of [any bomb hitting a bus] at this point."

Describing targets attacked on Wednesday, Myers said they included terrorist camps, al Qaeda forces, Taliban military facilities and troop deployments. While Northern Alliance commanders have complained that U.S. aircraft have not engaged dug-in Taliban troops defending Kabul, Myers said that U.S. fighter jets have attacked those forces.

-- Anonymous, October 18, 2001