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Special forces ready to hunt quarry in night raids

By The Guardian and Agencies in London and Washington

The first day of the new war is likely to look familiar, with cruise missile strikes and bombing raids lighting up the sky over Afghanistan.

After that, the US-led campaign against Osama bin Laden - blamed by the United States for the deadly attacks on New York's World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in Washington - and his Taleban supporters will be unlike any that has gone before. The US military has been tight-lipped about its options, but it is possible to sketch out the future course of the conflict.

More than in any previous war, it will be fought mostly at night and at close quarters by elite special forces. Commandos equipped with global positioning systems may already be in Afghanistan. Day one of the overt campaign will be marked by missile strikes and air raids on the Taleban's rudimentary air defences and its air force, the two main north-south and east-west highways, and the radical regime's leaders.

"I would expect the leadership of the Taleban to be gone in the first 24 hours," said one US former special operations officer.

The air and missile strikes would be mounted principally from two navy battle groups assembled around the aircraft carriers USS Enterprise and USS Carl Vinson, which are converging in the Arabian Sea.

Between them, the two groups can fire off 900 Tomahawk cruise missiles. They are supported by a British naval task force of 28 ships and 24,000 troops already in the region for exercises in Oman. The Carl Vinson is being moved out of the Gulf so that its F-14 and F-18 strike aircraft can reach Afghanistan without flying over Iran, and F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers are being sent to Gulf bases to take over the duty of patrolling the no-fly zones over Iraq.

B-52 and B-1 bombers also took off from bases across the US on Friday, some bound for the airbase on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Support aircraft, including KC-135 fuel tankers, were deployed to provide an "air bridge" for the deployment of combat planes.

In Iraq and the Balkans, ground troops were the last weapon to be deployed, in order to keep US casualties to a minimum. This time it will be different. Special forces will be at the core of the operation. US Rangers and Green Berets are on the way from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

The immediate problem is where to base the special troops so that they are at hand if and when intelligence comes in on where bin Laden and his lieutenants are hiding.

Some US troops will be deployed in the Central Asian republics, most likely in Uzbekistan, where teams will be stationed ready to rescue any downed pilots. But Uzbekistan is probably too far from the Hindu Kush mountains, where bin Laden is based. For internal political reasons, Pakistan is off-limits to troops. The preferred option may be to set up a base in Afghanistan itself. "Afghanistan has got about a dozen airfields, so you pick one and parachute in. Intelligence is fleeting and you want your force to be located near the target," John Pike, a Washington-based military analyst, said.

Defence weekly Jane's said in its latest issue that a slice of Afghan territory could be seized by American special forces commandos for a short time while they hunted for and detained bin Laden and his people, provided there were solid indications he was in that zone. The force most likely to be used to establish a foothold is the US 82nd Airborne, a rapid-deployment assault unit. Special forces teams would then be based there for sorties into the surrounding mountains.

These specialised units would rely on intelligence gathered by satellites, U2 spy planes and pilotless drones, as well as tips picked up by agents working for Pakistani intelligence, Russia, or the Afghan opposition Northern Alliance. The special forces teams will go out mostly at night, flown to their target by helicopters.

Most military officials and analysts believe this scenario is the Pentagon's "minimum programme". The open question is whether the proposed mission would expand to include direct support for the Northern Alliance and strikes on Iraq.

A combined air and ground assault of the kind being planned is unlikely to enter the quagmire that ultimately defeated Soviet forces in Afghanistan. The mission being planned today is punitive and limited. The pursuit of terrorist bands inside Afghanistan will involve relatively small units whose missions are designed, for the most part, to move into and out of a target rapidly.

"These kind of assaults have been on the drawing board for years," said the former special operations officer. "(The army's) Delta (Force) has been practising them continually. The reason they were not employed in the past was that they were regarded as too risky. Imagine the consequences a few years ago of a failed effort to get bin Laden. Pictures of dead American soldiers or of captured soldiers being put on show trials before Muslim clergy. It would have given bin Laden an enormous propaganda victory. What president or secretary of defence or general would have wanted to shoulder responsibility for that?"

But the political climate since the attacks on New York and Washington has changed. "Now, the opposite is true," the officer said. "Now, failing to attack is unthinkable."