[iwar] [fc:U.S..Drops.Giant.Bomb.on.Taliban.Lines]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-31 05:02:08
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 05:02:08 -0800 (PST)
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Subject: [iwar] [fc:U.S..Drops.Giant.Bomb.on.Taliban.Lines]
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U.S. Drops Giant Bomb on Taliban Lines
American Troops in Afghanistan, Pentagon Says   

By STEVEN GUTKIN
.c The Associated Press

CHARIKAR, Afghanistan (Oct. 30) - An American bomb blasted huge plumes of 
smoke 1,000 feet into the skies over Afghanistan's front lines Tuesday in an 
unusually mighty airstrike. The Pentagon said U.S. forces were with the 
northern opposition and directing fire against the Taliban.

The opposition alliance deployed hundreds of crack troops near Taliban lines 
north of Kabul, the first tangible sign of preparations for an assault on the 
capital.

Early Wednesday, U.S. fighter planes dropped three large bombs on camps used 
by Arab fighters in Sapora region near the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, 
according to the South Asian Dispatch Agency.

Fighters responded with anti-aircraft guns. There was no immediate word of 
casualties.

The United States acknowledged it had uniformed military personnel in 
Afghanistan, coordinating airstrikes with the opposition. A senior opposition 
official said such coordination will increase in coming days and that 
alliance forces were planning a major offensive to wrest the strategic 
northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taliban.

''There is coordination in all aspects,'' Abdullah, the foreign minister of 
the Afghan government-in-exile, said in an interview with Associated Press 
Television News.

U.S. jets pounded Taliban positions in the Balkh region around Mazar-e-Sharif 
on Tuesday, in strikes that an opposition spokesman called relentless. ''They 
hit very important positions of the Taliban,'' spokesman Ashraf Nadeem said.

Witnesses also said they saw a U.S. plane drop a bomb Tuesday at the Bagram 
front lines, about 25 miles north of Kabul, creating a mushroom cloud that 
billowed at least 1,000 feet into the air. Witnesses called it the biggest 
bomb to hit the area in 10 days of American bombardments on the front lines.

Despite the U.S. aerial attacks, the opposition alliance has made no advances 
against the ruling militia. The opposition has complained the U.S. strikes 
were not intense enough.

The United States launched the air campaign on Oct. 7, aiming to punish the 
Taliban regime for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden, whose al-Qaida 
terror network is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.

At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said American forces 
were ''very aggressively'' going after Taliban defenses facing the opposition 
and that 80 percent of the strikes Tuesday had been slated to target the 
front lines.

He said a ''very modest'' number of uniformed military personnel were on the 
ground in the north coordinating with the opposition on supplies and 
targeting and giving information ''helpful to the air effort.'' But Rumsfeld 
underlined that the opposition planned its offensives independently.

In other developments:

- The FBI warned again that terrorists may attack U.S. interests, possibly 
this week, and that Americans and police should be on the highest alert.

- British Prime Minister Tony Blair tried to rally support for the war in 
Afghanistan amid signs of public unease with the military campaign. He 
underlined the allied cause is just since a ''flood'' of evidence has linked 
the Sept. 11 attacks to bin Laden.

- Britain arrested an Egyptian for allegedly conspiring in the killing in 
September of Ahmed Shah Massood, the military leader of the northern 
alliance.

- Rumsfeld and his British counterpart, Geoff Hoon, said it would be unwise 
to announce in advance whether the bombing campaign will ease during the 
Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which begins in mid-November.

American jets bombed near the fronts north of Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif on 
Tuesday, as well as the cities of Jalalabad in the east and Kandahar in the 
south, according to Taliban and other reports.

''There were a lot of planes,'' said Hadi Abdul Khalq, an Afghan refugee who 
said he fled Kandahar on Tuesday, and who spoke on the Afghan side of the 
border near Chaman, Pakistan. ''The people were very scared and they were 
rushing in all directions. We can't take any more.''

Jets also rained bombs on a front line northeast of Taloqan, another northern 
city that the opposition hopes to wrest from Taliban control. ''We are very 
happy to see the military system of the Taliban hit by the bombs and to see 
their system paralyzed,'' said Saeed Jaffar, an opposition spokesman in the 
area said.

Near the front lines north of Kabul, the opposition was deploying a corps of 
some 800 to 1,000 elite troops, well-armed, trained, and ready for the order 
to march on the capital.

''We are ready for action,'' said 25-year-old Ahmad Zai, toting a Kalashnikov 
rifle and a rocket launcher. He said he expected to move on Kabul ''in the 
near future.''

At the village of Tutumdara, commanders inspected about 200 troops wearing 
camouflage who stood in formation while two dozen more sat on an old, 
abandoned Soviet tank, watching U.S. jets. Members of the corps said they had 
been moved up in recent days from the rear opposition base of Khwaja 
Bahauddin.

In their uniforms, they stood out among the bulk of the anti-Taliban troops - 
for the most part, ragtag bands in mixes of camouflage and traditional long 
tunics. The elite troops, or ''Zarbati,'' are better-paid, better-equipped 
and better-trained.

''In my 23 years of fighting I've learned how to become a sniper,'' said one 
of the soldiers, Latif, carrying his long-scoped sniper rifle. ''I sit in 
high places and take aim at my enemy. There are plenty of them.''

Despite the bravado and the reinforcements, opposition forces are believed to 
be outgunned on the front that guards the approach to Kabul, which the 
Taliban seized in 1996.

Thousands of Taliban soldiers and Arab al-Qaida fighters are believed to be 
dug in across the hillsides and undulating valleys facing the opposition 
forces.

Abdul Rahman, an opposition brigade commander, said Tuesday that he was told 
10 days ago to prepare for an attack on Kabul and ''now we are ready.'' He 
said he did not know when the attack would begin.

Abdullah, meanwhile, indicated that the alliance planned to begin operations 
soon against Mazar-e-Sharif, suggesting the attack would come ahead of 
Ramadan.

''A large area south of Mazar-e-Sharif will be liberated before us, starting 
a major move toward Mazar itself,'' he said.

Alliance forces tried moving on the city last week, but were repelled by the 
Taliban. The alliance hopes taking the city will open up supply routes from 
the north and begin reversing the Taliban's fortunes.

Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces involved in the war in 
Afghanistan, said Tuesday in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, that opposition Afghan 
forces could help the United States in several ways.

They could aid in the overthrow of the Taliban government and the fight 
against the al-Qaida network, he said, or they might help open an overland 
route to deliver emergency food aid to starving Afghans.

So far the U.S. Air Force has dropped about 1 million packets of food 
rations, but the pace of that effort has been criticized by international aid 
agencies as too slow.

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