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U.S. special forces now in Kabul
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
11/14/01
WASHINGTON — U.S. special forces are in southern Afghanistan as the campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorists moves into a much more difficult phase, top Pentagon officials said.
"We're not done yet,'' said Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
With the northern half of Afghanistan controlled by the anti-Taliban northern alliance, the focus of the fighting now shifts to the south, where U.S. forces have had a much more difficult time drumming up opposition to the Taliban.
The Taliban's spiritual center is the southern city of Kandahar, and its core support comes from the area's majority Pashtun ethnic group. Southern Afghanistan also has forbidding mountains, deep caves, underground bunkers and scores of other hiding places.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday raised the possibility that leaders of the Taliban or Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network might flee across the Afghan border into Iran to the west or Pakistan to the south and east.
He cited three possibilities, any of which he said would lead to the eventual demise of both groups:
"They can flee and reorganize in the south, they can flee and melt into the countryside, or they can defect. If they reorganize in the south, we're going to go get them. If they go to ground, we will, as the president said, root them out. And if they decide to flee, I doubt that they'll find peace wherever they select.''
A small number of U.S. special forces troops are in southern Afghanistan "doing things that are helpful to our side and unhelpful to the other side,'' Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news briefing. He said the U.S. forces in the south were not working with anti-Taliban groups as the ones in the north have.
Rumsfeld planned to travel to New York on Wednesday to visit the World Trade Center ruins as an illustration of why the United States is fighting in Afghanistan.
Both Rumsfeld and Myers said increased airstrikes on Taliban forces, made more accurate with the help of U.S. forces with the northern alliance, were one key to the alliance's quick takeover of a large swath of Afghanistan. The opposition forces poured into Kabul on Tuesday after Taliban forces beat a hasty retreat.
President Bush had urged the alliance not to enter Kabul out of fears that an alliance takeover would interfere with plans for a multiethnic coalition government to replace the Taliban. Alliance and U.S. military officials said a small number of opposition troops entered Kabul to keep the city from descending into chaos.
Bush, in private talks Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was emphatic about fulfilling American goals in Afghanistan, according to senior administration officials speaking on condition of anonymity. The officials said Bush at one point pointed his finger, thumped his hand on the table for emphasis and said: "Until the al-Qaida is brought to justice, we are not leaving.''
Rumsfeld cautioned against concluding that the Taliban's retreat from the north meant the hunt for bin Laden and his terrorist network was almost over. He said U.S. officials don't know where bin Laden is hiding.
With the capture of Kabul and other northern cities comes the potential for gaining information on the movements of bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders, and the Taliban, U.S. officials said.
U.S. forces accompanying northern alliance commanders are searching for Taliban items like computer disks, maps and documents that might contain useful intelligence, one official said. They probably also are interviewing Taliban prisoners and commanders who defected to the alliance.
A reporter asked Rumsfeld if he feared bin Laden would launch a new terrorist attack out of desperation.
"The idea that we could appease them by stopping doing what we're doing, or some implication that ... we're inciting them to attack us is just utter nonsense. It's kind of like feeding an alligator, hoping it eats you last,'' he said.
U.S. bombs fell in Afghanistan for a 38th day, and Rumsfeld said that in the aftermath of the Taliban's collapse in the north, the United States had two short-term goals besides hunting down the terrorists. They were opening a "land bridge'' to Uzbekistan in the north and repairing airports near Mazar-e-Sharif and north of Kabul, so that more humanitarian aid could be brought in.
Rumsfeld said a "very small number'' of U.S. forces were in Kabul, not enough to keep a careful eye on the opposition forces that entered the capital after the Taliban fled.
"They are not sufficient forces to monitor or police the entire city. They are a sufficient number that they can give advice and counsel to the people who are in the city, the leadership,'' he said.
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On the Net: Library of Congress country study on Afghanistan: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/aftoc.html