The Boston Globe October 11, 2001
FIGHTING TERRORISM THE MILITARY CAMPAIGN
US BOMBS HARD, MULLS NEXT STEP LACK OF TARGETS CITED; USE OF COPTERS, TROOPS ANTICIPATEDBy Michael Kranish, Globe Staff, and Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent
WASHINGTON - The US bombing campaign entered its fourth and most intensive day in Afghanistan yesterday as Pentagon officials grappled privately with the difficulty of finding meaningful aerial targets, Pentagon sources said, and expectations increased that helicopters and ground forces would soon enter the battle.
Reports from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, said US jets bombarded the city for two hours. Numerous airstrikes in the southern city of Kandahar created panic on the streets and sent civilians fleeing toward Pakistan.
Defense officials, meanwhile, began to question the reliability of their own intelligence on the activities of suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network, a problem that has hindered their strategic planning, according to a Pentagon source who attended internal briefings yesterday.
There were unconfirmed reports last night that US warplanes bombed some Taliban front-line troops, but the Pentagon held no regular briefing about the day's events. Some citizens fleeing Kabul said the bombing had also hit some homes, while UN officials reported that some of their affiliated workers were targeted and beaten by Taliban loyalists. The global fight of the airwaves continued as well. The Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, called in a radio address for Muslims worldwide to help defend Afghanistan against the US forces. "America is using its most modern weapons, but we have the best weapon to defeat them, our Muslim faith," Omar said. The broadcast came on a day when CNN reported that two adult male relatives of Omar had been killed during the initial Sunday raid.
President Bush, meanwhile, announced a campaign to find the 22 "most wanted" terrorists and then welcomed the scheduled arrival tomorrow of NATO planes to help patrol American skies. Bush, sending a warning to bin Laden and the other 21 terrorists on the new FBI most wanted list, said: "They must be found. They will be stopped, and they will be punished."
Officials reported the first US injury, which occurred when an unidentified soldier became trapped between two vehicles at an undisclosed location. The soldier, described as critically injured, was taken to a US base in Turkey for treatment. While Pentagon officials said the aerial bombardment had destroyed most of the Taliban's air defense system, a Taliban spokesman said that was untrue.
On a day when the Pentagon did not hold a formal briefing for reporters, meetings were held inside the military headquarters in an effort to assess the damage inflicted and to determine what to do next. At one such meeting, said the source who attended the session, high-level officials debated how long to continue the aerial campaign, a low-risk operation for the pilots, and when to start the higher-risk use of helicopters and ground troops.
The dilemma for Pentagon planners is that there is no playbook on how to wage a war against terrorist leaders who may move from cave to cave or house to house in Afghanistan and also have cells in other countries.
"There is still a lot we don't know about Al Qaeda and there is a lot that we think we know that simply isn't true," including the location of key figures, the Pentagon source said. The source said that military leaders are stressing that the campaign against global terrorism that began with the Sept. 11 attacks "is not primarily a military operation." "This is a new game," a senior defense official said. "We are doing traditional things like bombing, but only as a stage setter for future operations."
Knowing in advance what those future operations will be is extremely difficult, he said, given how fluid the situation in Afghanistan has become. "This is a step by step approach and you don't necessarily know what your next step is."
One growing concern, defense officials said, is the lack of credible intelligence on the activities of Al Qaeda members and senior Taliban leaders. Several administration sources said that Washington is now learning that some of the intelligence it thought it had on bin Laden and his lieutenants is wrong. Sources suspect that Al Qaeda and the Taliban have purposely misled US intelligence agencies, but they would not elaborate.
Officials have also suggested that another reason for concern about the quality of intelligence gathered is to prevent another mishap like the Monday airstrike that accidentally killed four UN workers in Afghanistan.
As a result, the Pentagon is taking pains to keep as many of its options open. For example, it is dispatching additional ground troops to the region but does not have a clear picture yet of what they will do. Special operations forces are already in Afghanistan and others are moving into staging areas in neighboring countries and on US Navy ships at sea but it remains unclear when or where they will be used. "We want to have everything we can in the region to deal with whatever eventuality presents itself," said another senior defense official.
Defense analyst John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, said there is "considerable uncertainty" about future targets. Pike said one concern is that bin Laden may not be in a cave but that he and his supporters may be in urbanized areas. "My concern is how many of the Al Qaeda combatants have melded into the general population of Kabul," Pike said. "My concern would be that this would turn into door-to-door combat in Kabul. There are 10,000 houses right next to each other and the question is which one" might bin Laden be hiding inside.
Experts warn that an open-ended military presence will eventually undercut international support for US military action. "A long presence could fuel discontent," especially in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, former Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in an interview yesterday. "We want to maintain as low a profile as possible."
From the beginning of the campaign, US officials have stressed that there were a relatively small number of high-value targets in a country devastated by more than 20 years of nearly constant warfare. Moreover, the Pentagon is not yet directing the bulk of the firepower at the front lines in the north, where the Taliban is facing the Northern Alliance. Bush spent much of the day underscoring the need to round up terrorists in addition to bin Laden and to be prepared for attacks against America.
In a visit to FBI headquarters, Bush unveiled a new program to find the 22 "most wanted" terrorists, similar to the successful program that lists the 10 most-wanted criminals. But the announcement also highlighted the difficulty of the task because all 22 of the terrorists on the lists - including bin Laden and his two chief lieutenants - have been wanted by US authorities for years. Indeed, the US State Department for several years has offered rewards of $5 million or more for some of the terrorists.
Administration officials said they believed the new program would be more successful because of the heightened awareness of the terrorist threat and the pledges of increased cooperation from many countries.
In another development, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice telephoned television executives yesterday to request they exercise judgment in broadcasting statements by Osama bin Laden that may include coded incitements to violence.
A few hours later, Bush appeared in the Rose Garden outside the White House alongside Lord George Robertson, the NATO secretary general. As previously announced, NATO, which has declared that the attack on the United States is considered an attack on all NATO countries, is sending surveillance planes here to help detect possible terrorist threats in US airspace. The NATO AWACS planes are being deployed in the United Staters to replace similar American planes that are being used around Afghanistan.
"This has never happened before - that NATO has come to help defend our country - but it happened in this time of need and for that we're grateful," Bush said. The deployment is part of Operation Noble Eagle, designed to patrol American skies in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which four commercial airliners were hijacked.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, asked about a New York Times report that attacks on terrorist groups in countries other than Afghanistan were in the offing, played down such speculation. The newspaper report suggested that the US might act in Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere.
While Powell said that bin Laden's Al Qaeda network "is located in many countries," he said there were "no plans about to come down the pike" to launch US assaults imminently in other countries. Powell did not address the possibility that the US would in some way support other countries that try to root out terrorists with their own methods.
Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
