Into the caves: Search for bin Laden requires 'raw courage, cunning and nerve'

By SALLY BUZBEE
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – American troops may have to go cave to cave and tunnel to tunnel looking for Osama bin Laden if Afghans can't flush him out.

But such a search, perhaps by 10th Mountain Division infantry troops or special-operations forces, would be cold, wet and dark, with the constant threat of cave-ins, surprise attacks and booby-traps.

It would demand "raw courage, cunning and nerve," said a former Afghan fighter who has advised the U.S. military on how the Soviets tried it.

"It's just too ugly to jump into," said retired Rear Adm. Stephen H. Baker, a defense analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. "If we have other ways to attack caves, we should do that instead."

For now, the Pentagon hopes that Afghans enticed by a $25 million bounty will crawl through tunnels looking for bin Laden, so that American troops won't have to, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The United States has been bombing the tunnels.

During the war against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, bin Laden spent millions to create a network of fortified bunkers and crisscrossing tunnels out of Afghanistan's natural caves and ancient underground irrigation trenches. Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere in a narrow, mountainous stretch of southeastern Afghanistan, ranging from near Kandahar in the south up to near Kabul and Jalalabad.

If local people can't find bin Laden and the job eventually falls to the U.S. military, it will require different kinds of forces than the special-ops troops now in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said. He did not elaborate, but other officials have said that might mean an infantry unit like the Army's 10th Mountain, which has about 1,000 troops in Uzbekistan.

The task also could fall to other special-ops forces, like the Army's highly secretive Delta Force counterterrorist team, or to the Marine expeditionary units on ships in the Arabian Sea.

Those assault forces are trained in the urban-warfare skills of going from room to room in a darkened house, looking for enemies – a rough approximation of fighting in tunnels, Baker said.

Typically, troops using night-vision goggles would throw a "flash-bang" incendiary device to temporarily blind and daze the enemy, then barge in shooting while watching behind for surprise attacks.

But caves hold additional dangers.

"If I see you in a tunnel and I shoot you, I just lost my eardrums," said David Hackworth, a retired army colonel and a writer on military issues. Any effort to protect ears would also muffle the sound of someone approaching.

There is also the constant danger of surprise attack from someone who can't be seen in a side tunnel, or from grenades, land mines or other explosive booby-traps.

Beyond combat dangers, Afghanistan has many types of poisonous vipers and scorpions.

The Pentagon has few high-tech solutions for underground combat. Under ideal conditions, it's possible to map caves or tunnels by measuring subtle changes in seismic waves, electrical resistance or gravity, with tools that geologists use to find oil deposits and earthquake faults.

Last month, the Pentagon asked private companies to work quickly to come up with new ways to use such tools to map caves under rough wartime conditions.

During the Vietnam War, U.S. infantry troops resorted to throwing tear gas grenades or plastic explosives into tunnels, then sending in slender soldiers equipped only with flashlights and pistols to search for Viet Cong.

But the tunnels in Afghanistan are both larger and far more extensive than in South Vietnam, said Ali Jalali, a former anti-Soviet Afghan fighter who advised the U.S. Army on tunnel combat.

Soviet fighters would first throw concussion bombs down tunnel shafts, then explosives and smoke bombs, Jalali said. Then they would enter the tunnels, armed with knives, hand grenades, pistols and assault rifles with tracer ammunition. The Soviets also used fuel-air explosives that sucked oxygen out of tunnels.

That might be the pattern the United States will follow, Baker said: First, northern alliance or tribal troops working with CIA or special-ops forces would put concussion grenades or explosives down shafts to kill or stun anyone hiding.

In the end, though, people have to go in – either Afghans or American troops.

"The people in those tunnels will fight to the death," Baker said. "It will be face-to-face, hand-to-hand, bloody combat."

APNP-11-20-01 1535CST