Omar's Compound Was Raided Airfield Also Hit In Rangers' Hunt For Intelligence

By Vernon Loeb and Thomas E. Ricks Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A01

U.S. Special Forces opened the ground war in southern Afghanistan with an airborne assault on a Taliban airfield and a raid on Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's compound near Kandahar designed primarily to gather intelligence, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

With U.S. aircraft bombing targets across Afghanistan for the 14th straight day, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers provided the Pentagon's first account of the early morning ground assaults but offered only limited detail, saying Army Rangers and other Special Forces overcame light resistance and inflicted an undetermined number of Taliban casualties.

Briefing reporters at the Pentagon, Myers said both Omar's compound and the airfield, a considerable distance southwest of Kandahar, were selected primarily to gather information on the Taliban and Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, not to capture or kill senior leaders.

"We gathered some intelligence, which we're evaluating," said Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We did not expect to find significant Taliban leadership at these locations. We, of course, were hoping we would, but we did not expect it."

Myers and other military and intelligence officials have stressed the importance of intelligence in the war against terrorism as U.S. law enforcement and intelligence seek to uncover Taliban hideouts, locate bin Laden and his allies and understand the global structure of his terrorist network, al Qaeda.

One senior official said the U.S. troops would have been interested in accumulating computer discs, ledgers, documents and communications gear. "We're looking for information and things that will lead us to the leaders, the big ones, that's what we're looking for," another official said.

Three officials said no prisoners were taken during the raids.

Beyond whatever intelligence the Special Forces obtained, the raids appeared to have been orchestrated to make a point -- that U.S. military forces are capable of staging complex, simultaneous raids at night in the heart of Taliban territory. The Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic militia, has ruled most of Afghanistan since 1996.

"U.S. forces were able to deploy, maneuver and operate inside Afghanistan without significant interference from Taliban forces," Myers said. "They are now refitting and repositioning for potential future operations against terrorist targets in other areas known to harbor terrorists."

The other message of the raid, an administration official said, was to entice ethnic Pashtun leaders in southern Afghanistan to desert the Taliban by showing what the United States can do for them militarily. A major purpose of seizing the airfield, the official explained, was to demonstrate that "we can set up a base for someone else and supply them and equip them, if we're so disposed."

Senior officials declined to say whether any U.S. forces from the raid remain on the ground inside Afghanistan. "There's a certain amount of uncertainty we want to have in the minds we are opposing," one official said.

Myers came to the Pentagon briefing room prepared with night-vision video clips of Army Rangers parachuting from C-130 transport planes and clearing the airfield building by building. The C-130s flew out of a Special Forces base in Oman, one official said.

The Rangers left behind posters, visible in the videos, with photographs of New York firefighters raising the American flag at the World Trade Center site and rescue workers hanging the flag from the Pentagon's damaged facade in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of the posters said, "Freedom Endures." The footage also showed grenade launchers, a machine gun and other weapons seized at Omar's compound.

Myers denied a Taliban claim that fighters from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia may have shot down a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter supporting the raids that crashed in Pakistan, killing two U.S. soldiers and injuring three others. Two other soldiers, Myers said, sustained minor injuries in the parachute jump.

Myers said the helicopter crash is being investigated as an "aircraft mishap" and added that "any claims that they shot this helicopter down are absolutely false."

Pentagon officials delayed releasing the names of the two soldiers killed in the crash, saying it was taking longer than expected to find their next of kin for notification.

Asked what message should be drawn from the raids -- which took place early yesterday, Kabul time, and Friday night, Washington time -- Myers replied: "That we are capable of, at a time of our choosing, conducting the kind of operations we want to conduct."

The last combat jump by the Rangers was during the invasion of Panama in December 1989, when they parachuted into the country along with units of the 82nd Airborne Division, retired Army Col. Johnny Brooks said in an interview.

The message conveyed by the use of aircraft, helicopters and Special Forces on the ground, Brooks said, was that the military can fight in a variety of ways and would not be as doctrinaire as the Soviets were during their 10 years in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Brooks also said it was likely that the larger raid on the airfield conducted by the Rangers was done to distract attention from the other, smaller raid. That also might have been the reason for using parachutes rather than landing by helicopters. He noted that airborne assaults are usually used only when the point being attacked is so distant that helicopters can't reach it.

Myers declined to say how the Rangers left the site after the parachute drop, but Brooks said it is possible that they secured the airfield and that their planes then landed and picked them up and took them out of Afghanistan, probably to Oman.

Retired Army Capt. Todd Bearden, a former member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the unit that conducted the parachute jump, said the pattern of the action -- two raids, with the larger one conducted by Rangers and the smaller by Special Operations troops, probably the elite Delta Force -- is one of the basic Ranger missions.

"When I was in the regiment, we practiced that all the time," Bearden said. "I think the message that's being sent is that we have a force that can fight in any terrain, any weather, and at night -- so that if you Taliban think you can sleep at night, think again."

The Taliban remained defiant, however, and vowed to defeat the Americans. Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, a senior Taliban leader, said in an interview with Qatar's al Jazeera television that Taliban fighters repelled the Americans and said, "This commando attack has failed."

"God willing," he said, "all their aggressive planes will fail."

Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's ambassador to Pakistan, said the militia has no intention of handing over bin Laden to the United States. The Bush administration holds bin Laden responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks,, and holds the Taliban responsible for harboring him for the past five years.

A refugee crisis continued to escalate in southern Pakistan, near the Taliban's home city of Kandahar, where United Nations officials say virtually the entire population is fleeing U.S. airstrikes and heading for the border of Pakistan. An estimated 5,000 Afghans crossed into Pakistan at the crossing point of Chaman yesterday, with another 10,000 stranded on the Afghan side of the border without proper travel documents, a U.N. official said.

In northern Afghanistan, a Taliban offensive launched Friday around the besieged city of Mazar-e Sharif appeared to have driven forces from the opposition Northern Alliance back slightly. But a Northern Alliance spokesman told Reuters that opposition forces still occupied the Marmul area, 20 miles southeast of the strategic crossroads city.

At the Pentagon, Myers sidestepped questions about the Special Forces raids, declining to say where the raids originated, how many soldiers and which units participated, and how U.S. troops were removed once the raids were over.

"One of the things that I simply can't do is talk about any of the tactics, techniques and procedures that we use, beyond what you've seen on the tape," Myers said.

He also declined to describe the type of air power used to back up the raids, other than to say that it included a "full spectrum" of aircraft. "They had all the support they needed, let me assure you," Myers said.

The ground assaults followed a heavy day of bombing Friday, with 90 carrier-based fighters and 10 to 12 land-based bombers and AC-130 gunships participating in strikes, Myers said. Those planes dropped munitions in 15 target areas that included antiaircraft sites, ammunition storage depots, armored vehicles, trucks and buildings.

Myers said the helicopter crew that crashed apparently experienced unexpected problems at the landing site. "This was a middle-of-the-night landing," Myers said. "There was a significant amount of dust when you get to close to the ground. The rotor brings up the dust and makes landing very, very difficult. And we think that had something to do with it."

An official in the Baluchistan provincial government in Pakistan said that initial reports from the province's Frontier Corps, a Baluch-based border guard, indicated that the search and rescue helicopter crashed in the district of Chagai. The town lies just south of Afghanistan along the north-south line separating Helmand and Kandahar provinces, about about 160 miles southwest of Quetta, Pakistan.

In the Afghan capital of Kabul, Reuters said many planes and at least seven explosions were heard Sunday morning as the U.S. campaign entered its 15th day.

-- Anonymous, October 21, 2001