ambushed

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

Revealed: how bungled US raid came close to disaster

·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
Tuesday November 6, 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.