U.S. Putting Off Plan to Use G.I.'s in Afghan Caves

The New York Times
December 27, 2001

By MICHAEL R. GORDON with ERIC SCHMITT

JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Dec. 26 — The United States military is revising a risky plan for American troops to search the caves of Tora Bora for traces of Osama bin Laden and other fighters of Al Qaeda, and is offering incentives to get Afghan forces to take the lead, American officials said today.

Just last Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he was ordering hundreds more troops to join Afghan militia in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders, in the hope of uncovering intelligence on terror attacks in the works. Officials said then that the plan was to send in about 500 marines and possibly Army troops, and the units began to prepare for the mission.

The Tora Bora region is a wild and remote area that contains mines, unexploded bombs and pockets of Al Qaeda fighters. Besides that risk, the mission would have required the building and maintenance of a substantial base to house the marines and other troops in an area where anti-American sentiment lingers.

This troop deployment, which had been expected to begin as early as this week, is now on hold. Instead, American officials are pressing Afghan commanders in the Jalalabad region to probe the rugged area. Washington is offering incentives like weapons, money and winter clothing, American officials say.

"It is a matter of finding the right mix of incentives to get them to play a more active role," a senior military official in Washington said. "If we are successful, they will do it."

But if the Afghan militia balk at committing the number of troops that American commanders believe are necessary to comb the area, additional American forces would probably be sent in, a military official in Washington said today. A leading option this week is to send an expanded complement of Special Operations forces, instead of marines or regular Army troops.

Special Operations forces are accustomed to working with the Afghan groups and would be less obtrusive than several hundred members of the Marines or Army. About 50 Special Operations troops from the United States have been working here for several weeks, either alongside or independent of the Afghan militia.

But the plans are still in flux. The rejiggering of the operation to hunt down Mr. bin Laden, the key suspect in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, and the delay in carrying that out raise the question whether the Bush administration has a clear idea about how to track him down and wind up the war in Afghanistan.

Officials at the United States Central Command in Tampa, Fla., where Gen. Tommy R. Franks has his headquarters, today tried to play down the perception that the hunt for Mr. bin Laden was undergoing anything but the normal adjustments of military plans.

"We've not moved any marines into Tora Bora, but that remains an option," said Col. Rick Thomas, a Central Command spokesman. "We will continue to monitor the situation in Tora Bora and the progress of the coalition forces."

Throughout the campaign, the Pentagon's preference has been for the Afghans to take the lead. Officials said today that that was an important factor in revising the plan.

Last week, American officials expressed concern when Afghan commanders in this area all but declared the military campaign over. General Franks, the commander of the American-led operation in Afghanistan, requested the American ground reinforcements largely because he worried that the Afghan allies might not have the ability, and especially not the will, to establish control over the cave-riddled Tora Bora region, military officials said.

But now American officials say the Afghans may be persuaded to press on after all if the rewards are sweet enough. "We're still trying to get them to do the cave work," a senior military official said. "If they don't, we'll have to go to Plan B."

There may be other factors at work as well. The Pentagon may want to limit the presence of American forces in Nangarhar Province, where fundamentalist Islamic sentiment runs high and where Mr. bin Laden and his Arab fighters once made their home. Americans are less welcome in this conservative region than in Kabul, the capital.

Unlike Special Operations forces who operate in small teams, any large Marine or Army force would need to be housed at a base built and maintained in a hostile area. As a result, military officials would have to be concerned both about casualties among troops searching caves for Al Qaeda fighters and among other support troops, who might be prime targets for attack.

Hajji Zaman, one of the main Afghan commanders involved in the battle for Tora Bora, said in an interview this week that American troops were not needed. "There is no need for them to come here," Commander Zaman said. "Nobody needs it. We have already finished the job there and done our duty."

Still another consideration is that the marines who were expected to rush here seem to have their hands full building a prison camp at the Kandahar International Airport. The memories of the uprising at the Qala Jangi fort near Mazar-i-Sharif, where some 230 prisoners and one C.I.A. officer died, are fresh. So the marines want to make sure that their detention center is secure, a task which makes it difficult to undertake another challenging mission.

That does not mean that other forces are not available. Another Marine Expeditionary Unit comprising 2,200 troops is expected to arrive in the northern Arabian Sea in the next several weeks, joining the two already in place. New Army forces could also be flown in to help guard the prisoners or carry out other missions.

In Afghanistan today, American warplanes returned from their missions with bombs still tucked under their wings because of a lack of targets. That repeated a pattern that has become common for much of the last week.

There has been speculation that Mr. bin Laden may have been killed in the air attacks on Tora Bora. But without a thorough search of the region, it is impossible to confirm his death or escape. Many other Qaeda leaders also remain unaccounted for.

American Special Operations forces and Central Intelligence Agency operatives are still prowling the area. But Tora Bora is a large and dangerous region, not all of which has been successfully cleared of remnants of Al Qaeda forces. So additional forces, either American or Afghan, would be needed.

Last week, the Americans concluded that they would have to carry out this task themselves. But then American officials concluded that they might be able to persuade Hazarat Ali, a United States-backed Afghan commander, to take on the job.

"If we can convince Ali to start working the caves in a more aggressive manner, we might not have to go in," the American official said. "We are talking about things that matter to him like weapons and money. He is thinking about it."

For more than a week, Marine commanders in Afghanistan have drawn up plans for storming the caves of Tora Bora, relying primarily on marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, most of whom remain at their desert airstrip southwest of Kandahar, according to officers at the Kandahar airport.

[As of Thursday, there were 17 detainees being held there, but work has continued to expand the camp. It now has a capacity of more than 200. The detainees so far have been held inside a corrugated-tin shed.

[Work continued today on new guard towers, at the corners of the compound, looming over the prison yard. Dozens of detainees are expected in the days and weeks ahead, tying down the more than 1,600 marines and other American and allied forces operating there, officers said.]

The marines from the 15th Expeditionary Unit are expected to begin returning to their three ships in the northern Arabian Sea within days, having reached the end of the optimal 30-day deployment cycle. Their makeshift base outside Kandahar is expected to be closed by the end of the week.

"We're just going to turn the lights out and leave," said a spokesman, Maj. Christopher W. Hughes.