Friday, November 2, 2001

U.S. wants to land more special forces
By Robert Burns
Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The United States is urgently working to land more clandestine warriors in Afghanistan to intensify pressure on the Taliban, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

Rumsfeld said the extra troops — three or four times as many as are there now — are crucial to U.S. efforts to improve the bombing campaign by pinpointing targets and coordinating with opposition forces. He said he wants to see increased coordination with a wider ring of rebel forces.

“We have a number of teams cocked and ready to go,” he told a Pentagon news conference on the 26th day of U.S. bombing. “It’s just a matter of having the right kind of equipment to get them there in the landing zones ... where it’s possible to get in and get out, and we expect that to happen.”

Rumsfeld revealed that one recent attempt to land U.S. special operations troops was called off after the helicopter-borne troops encountered ground fire, presumably from the Taliban militia. The Taliban control most of Afghanistan and are harboring Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.

Other landing teams have been thwarted by bad weather, Rumsfeld said.

He announced he will visit countries on the periphery of Afghanistan this weekend after meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Ivanov, in Moscow on Saturday.

He declined to identify the other countries he would visit, saying meeting plans had yet to be worked out. Before the U.S. bombing campaign began Oct. 7 he visited Uzbekistan, Egypt, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Rumsfeld on Tuesday had confirmed for the first time that a small number of U.S. special operations forces were inside Afghanistan to help designate targets for U.S. warplanes and to act as liaison with the northern alliance of opposition forces who seek to oust the Taliban.

The number of such special troops in Afghanistan apparently is between 100 and 200. The Pentagon has been reluctant to provide specific numbers out of concern for security.

“I’d like to see as soon as humanly possible the number of teams go up by three or four times,” Rumsfeld said. He said the present number was “nowhere near as many as we need.”

“We’re going to be adding people, to have a reasonable cluster of American special forces who are able to be in there, serve as liaison, assist with the communication, assist with the targeting, assist with the resupply,” he added.

Other officials have said the Pentagon is considering setting up a base inside Afghanistan from which such forces could operate.

The Army’s special operations soldiers include Special Forces, often called Green Berets, who are trained in unconventional warfare, clandestine reconnaissance and in training and advising rebel forces. Other special operations troops, such as Army Rangers, specialize in airborne assaults behind enemy lines such as the nighttime attack Oct. 20 on a Taliban-controlled airfield in southern Afghanistan.

Turkey on Thursday announced it would send 90 of its own special operations troops to Afghanistan, becoming the first Muslim nation to join in the U.S.-led attacks against the Taliban and al-Qaida. Turkey is a traditional U.S. ally in NATO and has experience in supporting the northern alliance in Afghanistan.

At the outset of his news conference Thursday, Rumsfeld read a statement defending the scope and pace of the U.S.-led military campaign, which some have criticized as too slow and constrained by concern that arrangements for a stable post-Taliban government have yet to be worked out.

Rumsfeld called that criticism “absolutely false.”

“Smoke at this very moment is still rising from the ruins of the World Trade Center,” he said, adding that Americans should realize “we are still in the very, very early stages of this war.”