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Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
U.S. attacks convoy near new base
American soldiers hide behind a barricade during an explosion during fighting
with Taliban forces at the fortress near Mazar-e-Sharif Monday, where several
hundred prisoners staged a bloody uprising.
Helicopters leave the deck of the USS Peleliu to deploy U.S. Marines into
Afghanistan Monday. NBC’s Tom Aspell reports.
NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
Nov. 26 — Shortly after hundreds of Marines set up base Monday on a
desert airstrip outside the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, U.S. aircraft
attacked an armored column nearby, a Marine spokesman said. President Bush
said “America must be prepared for loss of life” during a perilous new phase
of the war in Afghanistan.
THE ATTACK WAS the Marines’ first action after establishing a
foothold within striking distance of Kandahar, the last urban stronghold
controlled by Afghanistan’s Taliban militia. There was no immediate word on
casualties for either side.
Romley said AH-1W Cobra helicopter gunships attacked about 15 armored
vehicles in the convoy after they were spotted by U.S. aircraft. However,
officials at the U.S. Central Command later told NBC News on condition of
anonymity that the Cobras assisted with spotting the targets, and that Navy
F-14 Tomcat jets launched the actual attacks.
The Marine spokesman, Capt. David Romley, said the column included
tanks and Soviet-built BMPs, which are armored combat vehicles on treads,
equipped with guns and capable of carrying at least a dozen people each. They
were used by the Soviet army during its decade-long occupation of
Afghanistan. When the Soviets withdrew in 1989, they turned scores of them
over to its client regime, which later lost them to a variety of local
militias and warlords.
Romley did not say who manned the vehicles, but the airstrip is near
the last major stronghold held by Afghanistan’s Taliban militia. He said the
attack was still going on when he spoke to reporters shortly before midnight
at the new U.S. base near Kandahar. He would not provide details about the
location of the column or the direction in which it was moving, except to say
it was “in the vicinity of this base.”
The arrival of the first U.S. conventional ground troops follows the
capture of Kunduz, the Taliban’s last northern stronghold, after a two-week
siege by Northern Alliance troops.
PRISON UPRISING CONTINUES
In the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, the scene of a bloody prison
uprising by captured fighters loyal to suspected terror mastermind Osama bin
Laden, new explosions rang out for a second day despite official assurances
that the insurrection had been quelled. Holdouts barricaded themselves in a
tower and fired rocket-propelled grenades, witnesses said.
Until the Marine deployment near Kandahar, the U.S. role in the Afghan
conflict was largely limited to air strikes on Taliban targets, plus limited
ground missions by several hundred American special forces fanned out in
small units across Afghanistan.
Kandahar, the Taliban’s home base and spiritual center, has come under
fierce bombardment since the U.S.-led military campaign began Oct. 7, and the
Taliban has vowed to fight to the death rather than abandon its last
stronghold. In the last three weeks, the Taliban has lost its grip on
three-quarters of Afghanistan, including the capital, Kabul.
“The Marines have landed and we now own a piece of Afghanistan,”
Gen. James Mattis, commander of the attack task force, said Monday from
aboard the USS Peleliu, an assault ship sailing in the Arabian Sea.
‘A DANGEROUS PERIOD’
U.S. forces took the offensive seven weeks ago as part of its response
to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States, in which thousands died.
The Bush administration blamed the attacks on bin Laden, his international
al-Qaida terror network and his protectors in Afghanistan’s Taliban militia.
Bush acknowledged the dangers inherent in the new phase of the war in
Afghanistan. “This is a dangerous period of time, this is a period of time in
which we’re now hunting down people responsible for bombing America,” he
said at the White House, where he welcomed home two American aid workers held
captive for three months by the Taliban.
“Obviously, no president or commander in chief hopes anybody loses
life in the theater, but it’s going to happen,” Bush said.
Earlier Monday, officials said five U.S. special forces troops were
injured when a precision-guided bomb went astray near the Mazar-e-Sharif
prison.
Another American, thought to be employed by the CIA, was killed during
a revolt inside the same prison Sunday, U.S. sources told NBC News. However,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he could not confirm whether the
American was wounded, killed or captured. “Until the compound is secured ...
we will not know the answers to those questions,” he said.
As of Monday night in Washington, the compound appeared to be “as
secure as anything can be in that country,” a Pentagon official told NBC News
on condition of anonymity. However, officials said firefights were continuing
outside the compound.
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he
expected the military campaign to take some time, and that Taliban leader
Mullah Mohammed Omar would fight to the death for Kandahar.
“We think they’ll dig in and fight and fight perhaps to the end,”
Myers said. “We do not think it will over anytime soon.”
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SECURING THEIR BASE
Local Afghans identified the facility seized by U.S. Marines as
Dolangi airstrip, about 65 miles southwest of Kandahar. It originally was
built and used by bin Laden. They said that Omar’s personal helicopter had
been parked there a few days ago.
The compound includes a small mosque with a minaret and a large white
building that may have been a hangar, said Col. Peter Miller, chief of staff
of the Marine task force in Afghanistan.
By Monday, more U.S. troops and equipment had been ferried in by
KC-130 Hercules transport aircraft, officers on board the Peleliu said.
According to the Pentagon, there were 500 Marines on the ground by
Monday, and the number is expected to grow to more than 1,000 over the next
couple of days.
The Marines are establishing a “forward operating base,” Pentagon
spokeswoman Victoria Clark said, and they will remain on the ground as long
as is necessary to accomplish the mission, which she described as “generally
applying pressure” to the Taliban and bin Laden’s al-Qaida network.
Other defense officials told NBC News that the Marines would conduct
raids to gain intelligence in the area around Kandahar, provide protection
for special operations aimed at hunting down al-Qaida leaders and help secure
a land corridor for humanitarian aid to the Kandahar area.
Afghan sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MSNBC that
U.S. troops were moving to secure the road between Kandahar and Spin Boldak,
the last Afghan town before the border with Pakistan.
Pashtun tribal leaders were said to be negotiating with the Taliban,
their ethnic kin, for a peaceful handover of Spin Boldak. But Abdul Jabbar,
an Afghan tribal leader in Pakistan, told The Associated Press that the
efforts were being blocked by bin Laden’s lieutenants.
TALIBAN DENIES REPORTS
Both Pakistani and Afghan sources reported that the Kandahar airport
had been captured by Afghan forces loyal to Hamid Karzai, the Pashtun tribal
chief and anti-Taliban opposition leader. However, the reports were denied by
the Taliban, according to the Afghan Islamic Press.
Karzai is a member of the same clan as former Afghan King Mohammad
Zaher Shah.
Karzai said his fighters had moved to within five miles of Kandahar.
“I won’t predict anything in terms of time, but it will definitely go,” he
told Reuters by satellite telephone.
One of the most heavily mined areas in the world after 23 years of
war in Afghanistan, Kandahar is defended by up to 5,000 foreign fighters and
12,000 regular Taliban soldiers, according to Taliban defectors who have fled
to Pakistan.
PUSHING TOWARD KANDAHAR
Loud explosions rocked the area around Kandahar overnight and early
Monday, with bright flares illuminating the night sky, a witness in the city
said.
Pakistani journalist Nasir Malik, who is in Kandahar, said the center
of the city was quiet Monday afternoon, with truckloads of armed Taliban
soldiers driving through the streets. Despite Karzai’s claim, he said the
Taliban appeared to be in control of the city airport.
In a statement carried by the Afghan Islamic Press, Taliban spokesman
Maulvi Abdullah said the militants would fight U.S. forces to their “last
breath.”
Malik said there was no sign of local Taliban officials in their
offices. However, most of the top Taliban leadership is believed to be holed
up in and around Kandahar, including Omar. Northern Alliance officials said
they believed Omar and bin Laden were close together, but did not disclose
their reasons for thinking so.
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