Early use of U.S. special forces indicates attack plan still evolving

By Robert Burns

Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The disclosure that U.S. special operations forces have conducted missions inside Afghanistan in recent days suggests the Pentagon’s attack plan is still evolving.

A senior Bush administration official said Friday that U.S. forces have conducted scouting missions in Afghanistan. The official denied they were actively hunting Osama bin Laden, the exiled Saudi whom President Bush has called the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Army said shortly after the attacks that special operations forces had been deployed, but it has not said exactly which forces or where they went. There have been published reports of U.S. forces arriving at various air bases in Uzbekistan, Pakistan and elsewhere in the area.

President Bush on Friday alluded to the importance of unconventional forces like the Army’s Rangers and Green Berets.

“It is very hard to fight a … guerrilla war with conventional forces,” he told reporters at the White House. He refused to discuss details but said: “Make no mistake about it – we’re in hot pursuit” of terrorists.

In Pakistan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Riaz Mohammed Khan said, “We have no information about any active engagement of the United States special forces in Afghanistan.”

One of the U.S. military’s likely first steps in pursuing the elusive bin Laden and elements of his al-Qaida network in Afghanistan is establishing what military officials call “ground truth” – getting the lay of the land and listening and watching for information on al-Qaida’s leaders and supplies.

One way to do that is by using the Army’s Special Forces, commonly called the Green Berets. One of their core missions is “special reconnaissance.” That frequently means infiltrating enemy territory by land or air and hunkering down to keep watch on a particular place or area, with the capability of remaining there undetected and without the need to be resupplied for days, weeks or even months.

It’s a mission they performed in the runup to the 1991 Gulf War.

These specially trained soldiers can provide real-time intelligence by clandestine communications from their hiding places. Thus they could identify targets for possible air strikes or other raids.

The Army has five active-duty Special Forces groups, including the 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) based at Fort Campbell, Ky., which has trained throughout the Persian Gulf area and in Pakistan in recent years. If Army Special Forces soldiers are in Afghanistan, they probably are from this group.

In August 1992, four months before the first deployment of regular U.S. forces to Somalia, soldiers from the 5th Special Forces Group arrived there to gather information.

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made clear from the start of the administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks that special operations forces would play an important role.

In addition to these shadowy soldiers, the Pentagon has dispatched a great deal of conventional firepower to the Gulf area in recent days, including B-52 bombers, fighter jets, support planes and at least two aircraft carrier battle groups. A third carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, is en route.

On the Net:

Army Special Operations Command at http://www.soc.mil