Just hours after establishing a base in Afghanistan, American marines helped direct air attacks today on an armored column, inaugurating a new phase in the war that will deploy 1,000 American ground troops, Pentagon officials said.
About 500 marines dug in today at a primitive desert airstrip less than 80 miles southwest of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, but still within easy helicopter striking distance of the city. Officials said the Marine vanguard, along with another 500 marines who were expected to land Tuesday, will intercept military traffic, cut off escape routes for enemy fighters and, given credible intelligence, strike at leaders of the Taliban and at Osama bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda.
The marines will operate out of a base set up alongside an airstrip first surveyed during a daring nighttime parachute raid by United States Army Rangers on Oct. 19, the first significant mission of ground troops in the war, Pentagon officials said.
"They are not an occupying force," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today. "Their purpose is to establish a forward base of operations to help pressure the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, to prevent Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists from moving freely about the country."
From the base and rudimentary airstrip, where marines installed runway lights today, the American troops will focus attacks on the road system that Mr. Rumsfeld noted connected the "exits or entrances from Iran and Pakistan" and converged at Kandahar, the last large concentration of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.
The conduct of the war has been fairly conventional so far, but the situation in southern Afghanistan is strikingly different from that in the north.
Mr. Rumsfeld did not rule out a broader role for the marines, who will more than triple the number of American forces on the ground in Afghanistan, said to be about 300 members of Special Operations units.
"They will be looking for opportunities to mount a series of raids," one senior Defense Department official said. Said another official: "Could we put more troops in there? Yes. But it's not in the plan now."
The Afghan Islamic Press had said that Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban supreme leader, was still in command of forces at Kandahar, and Mr. Rumsfeld said it was unlikely he would be captured alive.
"From everything I've read about him, he's a rather determined, dead- ender type," Mr. Rumsfeld said, adding, "He just doesn't feel to me like the surrendering type."
Gen. Richard B. Myers of the Air Force, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that in contrast to Mullah Omar, who continues his efforts to rally his troops, Mr. bin Laden appears to have done little except seek refuge.
"I would only comment to that that Omar seems to be trying to organize the fighting of the Taliban, and bin Laden, on the other hand, seems to be concentrating on hiding," General Myers said today.
(China Daily November 27, 2001)
