Herald news services
WASHINGTON — The United States is in "hot pursuit" of terrorists behind the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush declared Friday as officials said several special-forces teams had been operating inside southern Afghanistan.
U.S. officials would not discuss whether intelligence operatives or commando units had been in Afghanistan in recent days to conduct reconnaissance or other missions, but one Pakistani intelligence official said allied special forces had been on the ground.
Senior military officials in Washington insisted that there were no U.S. military forces currently on the ground in Afghanistan. That, however, did not preclude the possibility that they had gone in and come out.
The elite commando teams — the exact number was not revealed — arrived at bases near two Pakistani cities, Peshawar and Quetta, on Sept. 13. Soon after, they covertly traveled inside Afghanistan on a mission to both hunt for Saudi exile Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida force of Arab fighters as well as to collect intelligence for future military missions, said two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The president said that while he expected that "the American people won’t be able to see what we’re doing," they should "make no mistake about it, we’re in hot pursuit."
Bush’s reference to "hot pursuit" may have been a choice of words intended to deflect criticism from conservatives in Congress that his administration is moving too slowly to retaliate for the terrorist attacks.
Or it may have signaled real progress on the military and intelligence fronts, about which the administration would have no interest in giving details that might prejudice ongoing operations.
During an appearance in the Oval Office with King Abdullah of Jordan, the president also said that the coming campaign against those believed responsible for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would be a "guerrilla war." His comments emphasized the role that special operations forces, rather than conventional military units, are expected to play in the first U.S. military actions to punish bin Laden and his al-Qaida network.
Special operations by their nature are cloaked in secrecy and deception, making it impossible to know whether the officials who discuss them obliquely are being completely candid.
They include Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and Green Berets, and the ultrasecret Delta Force.
One of the core missions of Army special forces is infiltrating enemy territory and reporting on enemy positions, targets and other intelligence information.
The British Defense Ministry confirmed last week that the Special Air Service, or SAS, was in the country after a reported firefight last week near Kabul with Taliban forces. The Russian’s Spetznaz operatives also have long been in northern Afghanistan working alongside the Northern Alliance, which holds control of at least 10 percent of northern Afghanistan.
Inside Afghanistan, a former U.S. official said, the special operations team is likely to travel on foot, or will commandeer local vehicles, and live off whatever food they can find in the wild or from helpful residents.
"They don’t need a lot of support," the former official said. "These guys are incredibly talented. They can live off the land, literally, for long periods of time."
The Air Force has deployed high-flying U-2 surveillance aircraft to the region, apparently from Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged that an unpiloted U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was lost over Afghanistan last weekend, but officials declined to say whether drones like it continued to collect evidence.
Bush’s statement Friday came as the White House, for the first time since the military planning began, gave a specific description of the administration’s political goals in Afghanistan, and left little doubt that one objective is the forcible removal of the radical Islamic Taliban government.
"The Taliban do not represent the Afghan people, who never elected or chose the Taliban faction," said a document prepared by officials of the National Security Council and the State Department.
Bush made it clear in his comments once again that he did not intend to occupy Afghanistan, and suggested he had studied the unhappy history of countries that have tried to tame the remote and mountainous land.
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