The Boston Globe March 8, 2002
Despite military edge, US finds tough fight
By Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON - US-led military forces fighting battle-hardened followers of Osama bin Laden in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan are learning a key lesson of previous military campaigns: overwhelming force and firepower don't guarantee victory.
Although they are relying on a high-tech arsenal and outnumber hundreds of holdout Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, US and allied forces have encountered a surprising level of resistance in nearly a week of the fiercest fighting American ground troops have seen since the Gulf War in 1991.
US military officials and defense experts all agree that the outcome of Operation Anaconda is reasonably assured and that more than 3,000 US, Afghan, and other allied troops backed by attack planes and helicopters will prevail over the Islamic militants, at least half of whom are believed to have been killed in the battle.
But when the dust clears, US forces also will leave armed with the knowledge that modern military technologies combined with brute force are not always enough to defeat the enemy. That is particularly true in taking on an unconventional force like Al Qaeda.
The ability to adapt quickly to changes on the battlefield and constantly revise the battle plan is just as important as force size and firepower, according to military officials and military specialists. That is just what US commanders were forced to do early on in Operation Anaconda.
For example, despite having the world's largest and most complex network of intelligence gathering systems, American commanders miscalculated the size of the opposing force. Officials at the US Central Command initially estimated the Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters at several hundred, but yesterday revised that to as many as 1,000.
''A fundamental problem you have is that technical systems are a heck of a lot better at keeping track of trucks and tanks than of people,'' said John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank in Alexandria, Va.
US forces involved in the assault in the Gardez area have found that out the hard way. Seven soldiers were killed early this week when their helicopters came under small arms fire while attempting to insert special forces into the fight.
The fact that US forces would select a landing zone in range of small arms fire illustrates the difficulty in pinpointing the location of enemy forces hiding in mountain caves and ridge lines rather than in open terrain.
In another incident, soon after the battle began on Saturday, a company of soldiers from the Army's 10th Mountain Division was pinned down for 18 hours by Al Qaeda and Taliban mortar fire coming from three directions. At least 12 soldiers were injured before being extracted by helicopter.
''I think given the size of the area, perhaps 60 to 70 square miles, one is not going to have precision of where those forces may be at any point in time,'' Army General Tommy R. Franks, commander of the war in Afghanistan, said Wednesday.
The battle also has underscored the challenge posed by environmental conditions, chosen not by the United States but by the Al Qaeda and Taliban militants. They opted to fight in the mountains of Afghanistan near the Pakistan border, just where they held off the Soviet Army in the 1980s.
Operating in the snow at elevations of 11,000 feet or more and in sub-zero temperatures, US and allied forces also have had to contend with the elements as well as enemy forces.
Defense officials said that transport helicopters have had to dump some of their equipment before inserting troops into the mountains because the mountain air is too thin to support the rotor blades of fully loaded helicopters.
The type of combat unfolding in eastern Afghanistan, where a small and relatively low-tech force has mounted a strong resistance against a larger and better-equipped one, is not new in the annals of US military history. Military officials have a buzz word for it: assymetric warfare.
It is reminiscent of the Vietnam War, a guerrilla campaign in difficult terrain that ultimately killed as many as 200 US soldiers a day even though they were better armed. Perhaps a better analogy is the cave fighting on Pacific islands in World War II against Japanese forces, who were arguably as suicidal as the Al Qaeda and Taliban holdouts.
''In contrast to the ground campaign in the Gulf War, where much of the Iraqi army was surrendering and other parts were withdrawing, these [Al Qaeda and Taliban] guys are fighting to the last man,'' Pike said.
''It's more like Okinawa, when US forces had to go over every square foot of ground on those islands and kill them all.''
Retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper, an authority on assymetric warfare, believes that ''understanding the enemy, its circumstances and its culture are more vital to acheiving victory than technical edge.''
''A lot of the faith in American military prowess that we saw last fall [with the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan] was unrealistic," Pike added.
© Copyright 2002 Boston Globe Electronic Publishing Inc
