News-Info-Alerts

Re: 18-20 Missing US Military in SWA

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: May 23, 2002

The story of the missing 18 US special forces personnel in Afghanistan will not go away. As a matter of fact, it has now grown to 20 personnel unaccounted-for. However, it would appear that the story is being deliberately fed to/out of Pakistani news agencies/sources as either a red herring, disinformation, a distraction, propaganda or a trial balloon.

For two moths now, the story has drifted through the wire services, foreign press and other information networks. Oddly, it popped up at about the same time that the Speicher news began (13 MAR 02), fell into oblivion, and has resurfaced with regularity whenever other news from the region captured the attention of the public.

AII POW-MIA does not endorse any of the reports, nor do we put much stock inthem. We will post what we hear along the way because it is curious and has a pattern.

Here are 2 more reports, one from today:

"US operations in Paktia to find 20 missing troops
Thursday, May 23 2002 @ 19:15:00 CEST

The News - Jang
Thursday May 23
By Behroz Khan

PESHAWAR: Diplomatic and intelligence sources believe that the joint US-British search operations in eastern Afghanistan are basically aimed at finding clue to the whereabouts of the missing personnel of the American special forces rather than capturing al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters.

"We have been hearing that 20 personnel of the United States commandos are missing and the search in Paktia, Paktika and Khost is actually about them," diplomatic sources told this correspondent.
The sources said that reports suggest that one of the captured US commandos has been killed after he put resistance the time the entire convoy was trapped by the trained and battle hardened. Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Nakai and Shahi Kot areas of Paktika province before the launch of Operation Anaconda. However, no confirmation of the claim is available.

"Reports about the missing Americans are circulated among intelligence agencies, but official confirmation from the US authorities is yet to come," a senior officer of Pakistan secret services said.

The sources said that neither exact number of the missing Americans, if any, has been provided to them (Pakistan's secret services) despite being part of the joint efforts in the ongoing operation, nor the US officials have conceded that personnel of the special forces have been captured by the enemy."

Sources close to the Taliban claimed that more than 60 Americans had been captured by Taliban and the Arab fighters in Shahi Kot and Nakai areas in a properly executed operation days before the launch of the operation in Shahi Kot in March this year.

"Our leaders believe that the capture of the American commandos can help in the release of arrested Taliban and al-Qaeda members from Cuba," a Taliban source on condition of anonymity said. "We have been waiting for the moment to start negotiations about swapping prisoners with the US authorities," said the source.

Taliban and intelligence sources said that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters camouflaged as Afghan soldiers after they (Taliban/al-Qaeda) overpowered the Afghan soldiers helping the US forces in Shahi Kot as the vanguard force and used their military uniform to encourage the marines to move towards the advance posts in the area disguising themselves as pro-American soldiers.

The commandos, they say, were trapped in the mountainous terrain and one of them was reportedly killed after he resisted the capture. No confirmation of the claim is available. Taliban sources also claimed that the captured Americans were shifted from Shahi Kot to safer places during the heavy bombing and ground assault when Operation Anaconda was launched.

The sources believe that the captured Americans have been shifted to western parts of Afghanistan. The operations started by the US, British and Pakistani troops on both side of the Pakistan-Afghanistan porous border, these sources said, was due to suspicions as the US military experts believe that the captured Americans have either been kept in
the eastern provinces of Afghanistan or shifted to the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of the border."

AND

"
AFGHANISTAN:

THE SOVIET-TYPE QUAGMIRE HAS JUST STARTED (March 21, 2002)

Only last week, we were wondering whether Operation Anaconda, a seventeen days operation launched by the Americans in a mountain ridge south of Kabul, was the end of the Taliban resistance or the beginning of the Afghan quagmire the former Soviet Union former generals predicted months ago (see analysis).

Today, we have the response: Operation Anaconda did not wipe out the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from their “last” strong hold. The operation was at best inconclusive, at worst a significant set-back that has probably rekindled the prestige of the Afghan Taliban among the local population. Furthermore, the operation might later prove to be a turning point in the American Congress and the American public opinion.

Why such dire prediction? Because it is now revealed that not only the Pentagon has been unable to justify its own account of the battle, but has actually been hidding for days that 18 US soldiers had been taken hostage by the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. As the Russian newspaper titled: the Anaconda choked on its own tail.

Clearly a battle said to be decisive, with more than 800 Taliban killed in the first few days (CNN News on March 13, 2002 based on Pentagon briefings) ended in disarray. While the Pentagon was emphasizing the might of its army, pointing out that more than 2,500 bombs were used to reduce the enemy forces to pieces, the account coming from the opposing indicated that the Taliban death toll was remarkably low in view of the duration of the operation (seventeen days) and the size of the military deployment on the American side (1,200 troops at one point).

The News, a Pakistani newspaper, reported on March 21, that an al-Qaeda leader, Saif ul-Adil (in the Pakistani jargon, the al-Qaeda operators are described as “militants), was putting the number of deaths among the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters at only four Taliban soldiers and two al-Qaeda fighters. Saif ul-Adil is himself well and alive and taking shelter at Zurmat, a location near Shah-e-Kot where the fighting took place.

Although various informations, from both sides, are impossible to verify independently, foreign journalists who roamed Shah-e-Kot once they were allowed in, saw only shell-shocked villagers and two graves. An American commander challenged on the number of reported deaths, lamely said that either the Taliban had removed their dead, burried them quickly or the bombing had shattered the new graves. Another commander was also quoted telling an American journalist that it was known that the Taliban had rushed an order for 300 to 400 coffins, which was the proof that they had a high casualty rate. Both statements were at best naive. Muslims bury their death in a simple shroud and no coffin is needed.

A more realist American military adviser, who did not want to be named, said that fewer than 50 Al-Qaeda bodies have been discovered, compared to the hundreds of Al-Qaeda dead earlier claimed by the U.S. Major General Frank Hagenbeck. The commander of all coalition troops in Afghanistan now thinks the number of Al-Qaeda dead is only in the "double digits."

In any case, the very fact that the USA wanted to start a new operation, after winding down operation Anaconda, while calling on the British to send more troops, was a sure sign that something had gone wrong. In short, operation Anaconda was the first ground battle in Afghanistan where enemies were facing one another on the ground, and unfortunately for the American troops, round one of what is probably to be a long war, was won by the Taliban and al-Qaeda elusive fighters while 18 American soldiers went missing in the middle of the night.

The American public being kept in the dark about the missing soldiers until now, the launching of a new operation against al Qaeda militants and Taliban soldiers under the code name “Harpoon" makes some sense. The operation carried out by 500 Rangers and Canadian special forces in eastern Afghanistan, south of Gardez is clearly a hunt for the American soldiers held hostage. However officially, the goal was said to be a secret, while publicly it was announced that about one hundred Taliban soldiers and their allies still in the area were the next target.

While the Pentagon was expecting the Operation Harpoon to solve the fiasco of the operation Anaconda and get back the missing soldiers, Taliban and al Qaeda fighters attacked the foreign forces in eastern Afghanistan early Wednesday (March 20) in a strike highlighting the dangers posed by a mobile and elusive enemy. One US soldier was in a stable condition after being shot in the arm in the overnight attack at an airfield at Khost near the eastern border with Pakistan, US Central Command in Tampa, Florida, said in a statement. Khost and the province of the same name borders the Shahi Kot Valley in Paktia province, where the missing soldiers vanished.

Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported that three Afghan allied soldiers were killed and eight wounded, but this could not be independently confirmed. The US army spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty said the attack started at about midnight and lasted several hours.“Terrorists using machineguns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars attacked coalition forces in Khost,” he told a news conference at Bagram Air Base on the outskirts of Kabul. Two United States military bases outside Khost city in eastern Afghanistan were attacked early Wednesday, killing three and wounding eight Afghan allied troops, news reports said. One American soldier was also wounded, the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) agency reported. Rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machineguns were fired in the pre-dawn attacks on Khost airport, situated south-east of the city, and a training camp run by the U.S. for the allied Afghantribals at Sara Bagh to the north-east, the Pakistan-based agency said.

Helicopter gunships arrived at the scene and returned fire, the agency quoted residents of Khost as saying. Details of the fighting were not available as the battle areas were sealed off.But newsfiltering into the bordering Parachinar area of Pakistan claimed the Afghan allies were killed by "friendly fire" from US warplanes called in to help.

Furthermore, it was later disclosed that a small number of US troops were hurt Tuesday when an MH-53 special forces helicopter in which they were riding made a hard landing in southern Afghanistan, US defense officials said. The cause of the accident was not known but it was not the result of hostile fire, US Central Command assured. However this is not the first time that such an incident occured. Clearly helicopters have significantly contributed to the numbers of deaths and wounded among the American forces.

The Khost attacks are not the first, nor the last of its kind. The American troops who believed that their barracks would be a safe haven are discovering that in Afghanistan no place is safe for them.: a problem that the Soviet army encountered twenty years ago and that led to a massive drug addiction among the young recruits to combat boredom and stress in an hostile country.

What is the real meaning of the past events? The Taliban are now engaged into the kind of war they know best, the same that the Soviet Union could not master and control, the hit-and-run battles that demoralized the Soviet troops, who could not pinpoint any large concentration of freedom fighters to finish them off but had to face constant danger from well-trained and invisible fighters.

Now with eight U.S. soldiers and three allied Afghan fighters killed in action, 51 wounded and 18 missing Americans, while no one can say for sure what has been the Taliban and al-Qaeda tally at Shah-e-Kot or even Tora-Bora, with Osama Bin Laden and Sheik Omar at large, the Pentagon and the Bush administration are discovering what Afghanistan and a low-tech war are.

The administration may have to stop thinking that high-tech weaponry and a further 24 billion dollar budget just to bomb to submission the Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters whose entire budget is probably under 100 million is going to work and change life in Afghanistan.

If money is what matters to change a society, it could probably be used in a more efficient manner. To rebuild the country and change the centuries-old mentalities of the people, it is said that US$10 billion would be enough while actually only 25 million have been disbursed, all in Kabul and nowhere else.

As it is, except in Kabul, the Afghan people have never felt so insecure. As for Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan, like its predecessors before the Taliban, it is easier and safer for him to go to Paris, London and New York than to cross the country. And all the warlords have kept their arsenal. Contrary to the Bonn agreement, they will keep their private army. The international peace-keeping force will protect basically the expatriate community in Kabul, the Afghan government and possibly the King if he comes back.

The Afghan war is far from over: it has just started.

Look at the situation, five months after the start of a relentless bombing campaign not seen since World war II: while the American Special Forces are continuing their efforts to locate the 18 US soldiers taken hostage by the Taliban and al-Qaida fighters during the most intense fighting in the snow covered peaks of the Arma region of the eastern Paktia Province, the fighting moves elsewhere. A few bombs here and there, and tragic collateral damages are not going to improve the situation in the immediate future.

The Pakistani newspaper reports that the Taliban are demanding the safe release of more than 350 Taliban and non Afghan prisoners languishing in X-Ray Cells in Cuba. The same sources said that the American forces had not choice but to withdraw from the Gardez region and provide safe passage to the al-Qaida and Taliban forces for the safety of the US soldiers who were taken hostage during a night time operation. No one knows whether it is true or not, but it is possible. At least, it is coherent with the sudden disappearance of the Taliban, said to be trapped in the first place, and the sudden end of the bombing.

The war is coming to the ground. Smart bombs are not going to dislodge elusive fighters in the wilderness of Afghanistan. That is exactly what the Taliban were expecting.

By past standard, 1,700 additional troops are not going to alter the balance of force. The Soviet Union ended up committing more and more troops accross the country and an array of sophisticated weaponry, inclusive of its latest jet-fighters stationed at Bagram, before it decided to pull out. The casualties sky-rocketted as well as the financial cost. But the Afghan fighters kept their cool and won.

“High-precision arms and other modern technologies do not work in Afghanistan, but the USA will not admit this fact, the Russian Pravda writes”.

The Pentagon officials have become more cautious about their statements. President Bush, speaking during a visit to St. Louis on Monday, also said that while Anaconda was over, the war in Afghanistan was not. "I feel like we've got a lot more fighting to do in Afghanistan," he said. "These are people who are there to die and we accommodated them (É).They are relentless, but so are we." Obviously, he knew more at the time than he was prepared to say. But it is hard to share the views of his advisers that, whatever the body count, the al-Qaida had been disrupted and put on the run. If anything, it is the American strategy that has been disrupted.

How long will it take for the American public to realize that its mighty troops have little chance to get out of Afghanistan any time soon? For Bush, to be reelected, it is imperative to maintain the fiction of the invincible American armada. We know what happened to the first one. He does not.

March 21 , 2002 ©asian-affairs"