US sends in special forces as offensive in north fades
thescotsman.co.uk
Chris Stephen In Jabal u Saraj
UNITED STATES special forces are to go into action on the ground near
the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, according to a senior defence official
in Tajikistan, where the units are based.
The move, the first overt combat role for US ground forces, comes amid
mounting frustration in Washington about the failure of Northern Alliance
troops to make progress.
Tajikistan agreed last weekend to open three bases to the United States,
and also to British, Turkish and French special forces. Italy meanwhile
became the latest nation to offer troops, with 3,000 men pledged.
Yesterday saw the most intense raids so far by US planes against
Taleban units on the Shamali plain north of Kabul. From just before dawn
until dusk, the plain echoed to the sounds of US jets and the explosions
of bombs. A total of five strikes by B-52s were made.
US planes dropped tens of thousands of propaganda leaflets urging
ordinary people to rise up against the Taleban. The leaflets showed a
photograph of one of the Taleban’s notorious "religious police" beating a
crowd of women, with the slogan: "Do you want in the future such a bad
life for your wife and children?"
On the back of the leaflet, playing on Afghanistan’s extreme xenophobia,
was a picture of an Arab member of the Taleban forces, with the slogan
"Get these foreigners out of Afghanistan" superimposed.
"Don’t worry, they don’t mean you," said a soldier on the Northern
Alliance front line yesterday. "We love the Americans."
They certainly love the US bombs. Yesterday’s strikes made use of
specially hardened "bunker buster" bombs, designed to delay their
explosion while they pass through the topsoil to detonate in underground
bunker complexes. But despite a big increase in US bombing raids, with
120 daily sorties, there is no sign of the Northern Alliance making a
breakthrough against the Taleban.
For several days Northern Alliance officials have been assuring news
agencies that a series of towns and villages have fallen to their troops.
The truth is that the Alliance force nine miles from Mazar has not budged
an inch in two weeks, despite US air strikes directed by forward air
controllers.
The Alliance has failed to find a way to ship in artillery and shells to
smash through the front line, and is still fighting skirmishes with Taleban
units in the rear. At least one unit which had defected to the Alliance has
now defected back again and there is no sign yet of the inspired
generalship needed to bring off a victory either In Mazar or on the Kabul
front.
And, like the Serbs in Kosovo two years ago, the Taleban troops have
withstood the hammering they are getting from the air without cracking.
Yesterday they opened fire on Russian army troops guarding the Afghan
border with Tajikistan at Kupletin.
Nevertheless, the coalition keeps growing. Italy is to supply paratroopers
and support troops, plus the aircraft carrier Garibaldi, with eight jump jets
and four helicopters aboard and one or two escort frigates capable of
carrying helicopters.
Britain’s envoy to Afghanistan, retired diplomat Paul Bergne, was spotted
by The Scotsman in Northern Alliance territory north of Kabul, meeting
senior Afghan officials.
While Washington’s special forces fly in and out of the forward airfield of
Golbahar in choppers and a light plane, Mr Bergne has retired to a
Northern Alliance guest house buried in the mountains of the Hindu
Kush.
Steeped in the history of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan where he was
ambassador in the mid-90s, Mr Bergne, 63 - who declined to speak to
this correspondent - speaks fluent Tajik and Russian, along with
passable Uzbek. Now an Oxford don, he is regarded as unorthodox, a
skill that will come in handy as he gets to grips with the various warlords
who make up the Northern Alliance. |
