Hi Gambia-Lers:
The propaganda war goes on. Are we really being told the truth?
·Delta Force caught in ferocious Taliban ambush ·Debacle prompted review of
war tactics
Luke Harding in Quetta Julian Borger in Washington and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday November 05 2001
The Guardian
The Pentagon's only publicly announced commando raid on Taliban positions,
hailed as a success and beamed around the world in grainy video pictures only
hours after it took place, actually went badly wrong, seriously injuring
American soldiers, sources in Pakistan said yesterday.
The debacle, which saw US Delta Force soldiers come under intense fire from
the Taliban, prompted a review of special forces operations in Afghanistan
and seems to have led to a delay in similar behind-the-lines operations.
The ferocity of the Taliban resistance caught US commandos unawares and
showed that 13 days of bombing had failed to break the Taliban's
organisational morale. It has sparked a debate in the Pentagon on the
advisability of such daring missions in the absence of clear intelligence.
Soon after the October 20 raid, the US appeared to switch its military
strategy, throwing its weight fully behind the Northern Alliance, relying on
the opposition movement to provide ground troops for the campaign.
The day after the raid the Pentagon hailed the operation a success, which
proved that US forces could strike anywhere at any time and in a manner of
their choosing.
However, details provided to the Guardian by sources in Pakistan and the US,
together with American press reports, have present quite a different picture.
· A raid led by Delta Force commandos on a Kandahar compound of the
Taliban's leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, ran into heavy resistance, causing
serious casualties and forcing a retreat. One US soldier's foot was blown
off.
· A simultaneous raid by army rangers on a Kandahar airstrip was carried out
only after forward troops had checked that the area was clear. It was
mainly for the benefit of the cameras, and to boost the rangers' morale.
· The fierce Taliban response to the Delta Force raid led to a review of
similar planned operations, and led to questioning of the leadership of the
war's US commander, General Tommy Franks.
According to an authoritative and independent source in constant touch with
Kandahar, Delta Force commandos, the most secretive and elite in the US army,
searched Mullah Omar's compound but found it had been stripped of anything
that might provide useful intelligence. As they emerged they came under
intense fire, forcing them to retreat. The Taliban later retrieved "an
American foot" from the scene, still in its boot.
"There was a lot of blood," the source said. "The Taliban had expected an
attack and had taken everything of value out of the compound. They were ready
and waiting. They were only too delighted when the Americans arrived. It was
not as if Mullah Omar was going to leave a note inside saying: 'Osama is
hiding here'."
During the raid one of the Chinook helicopters was badly damaged. The Taliban
later showed off a section of its landing gear and said they had shot the
helicopter down.
The account provided to the Guardian was consistent with an article published
yesterday in the New Yorker magazine. The author, Seymour Hersh, said that 12
Delta commandos were wounded, three of them seriously. He quoted a US
military officer as saying that the Delta assault found itself in "a tactical
firefight and the Taliban had the advantage."
The commandos were forced to retreat to waiting helicopters and abandon one
of the objectives of the raid - the insertion of an undercover team into the
area, the New Yorker article said.
Delta Force is a primarily anti-terrorist unit based at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina. Its very existence is never formally discussed, nor are casualties.
They are trained to attack with stealth in small teams, but the Kandahar raid
was an extensive, noisy production, involving a back-up force of 200 rangers,
AC-130 gunships and a 100 Delta Force commandos.
At the same time, a company of rangers parachuted on to a Kandahar airfield
in an operation portrayed the next day in dramatic television footage. But in
his article, Mr Hersh said that before the drop, an army pathfinder team had
checked that the airfield was free of Taliban forces. The raid was for the
benefit of the cameras and to give young rangers with no combat experience
some much needed confidence.
The last joint rangers-Delta Force operation, in Somalia in 1993, ended in
disaster with the shooting down of two helicopters and the deaths of 18
American soldiers.
On October 20, the speed and intensity of the Taliban response at Mullah
Omar's compound "scared the crap out of everyone", a senior officer told the
New Yorker, which reported that the setback had triggered an inquiry into how
such commando raids were planned and executed by Central Command.
Since military operations against the Taliban began on October 7, there has
been grumbling among the Penta gon's civilian leadership that Gen Franks, an
artillery officer, is too hidebound and too steeped in US military doctrine
and its reliance on overwhelming firepower, to lead a special forces campaign
requiring guile and stealth.
Some senior officials want special forces operations to be run directly from
the Pentagon.
Gen Franks and the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, General Richard
Myers, both denied that the Taliban had inflicted casualties on US forces.
Gen Franks, who is based in Tampa, Florida, said there were injuries during
the operation, but that "we had no one wounded by enemy fire."
The failure of the October 20 raid prompted senior British officers, to
emphasise the importance of good intelligence. They made it clear they did
not yet have it, and the postmortem following the raid has delayed repeat
operations.
"We need proper, joined-up, serious operations," a British defence source
said.
However, with better intelligence, further raids by small groups of special
forces are now on the cards once more, almost certainly involving British
special forces.
British military planners also advised the US that a better option would be
to set up a forward operating base inside Afghanistan. But that, they said,
would have to wait. "The US will have to bomb their way into that position,"
a British defence source said.
Meanwhile, the US strategy is now to focus firepower on assisting the
Northern Alliance and other opposition groups to make advances against the
Taliban. The Northern Alliance is said to be poised for major offensives on
the capital Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif after carpet-bombing by US B-52's have
pummelled the Taliban lines.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited
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