American ground troops move into Afghanistan

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. special forces have begun operations on the ground in Afghanistan, officials said Friday, opening a significant and dangerous new phase of the assault against the Taliban and terrorists.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said for the first time that the U.S. military is coordinating with anti-Taliban forces on the ground, providing food, ammunition and money.

"There is good coordination from the air with the ground in some places, particularly in the north," Rumsfeld told reporters traveling with him to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. "There is not that kind of coordination as of yet in the south."

A U.S. official said separately that U.S. special forces were supporting intelligence efforts to undermine the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said military action could increase markedly in coming days.

A Pakistani official, also not wanting to be identified, said Pakistan was told by the Americans that special forces were dropped into Taliban territory on Thursday.

"Their basic purpose will not be to seize anything, but to conduct hit-and-run operations, pinpoint installations, smoke out terrorists," said the Pakistani military official.

The official said U.S. forces have also been in anti-Taliban northern alliance territory of Afghanistan for more than one week.

Rumsfeld would not confirm that special operations forces were in Afghanistan. "Any ground forces are in harm's way," he told reporters on the way to talk with B-2 bomber crews at the Missouri Air Force base.

The Pentagon chief didn't provide details of U.S. support for the northern alliance rebels and other anti-Taliban groups.

Gaining the support of anti-Taliban fighters across Afghanistan will help the U.S. meet its goal of rooting out al-Qaida and toppling the Taliban, Rumsfeld said.

"It is going to be a lot easier, in my view, to try to persuade a number of them to oppose the Taliban and oppose al-Qaida and to help defeat them, than it is, in fact, to defeat" the terrorists, he said.

At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference he would not comment on any aspect of ground operations.

"If or when they are on the ground, being there would make them the most vulnerable individuals engaged in this campaign," he said.

Reviewing Thursday's bombing, Stufflebeem said more than 90 strike aircraft went after 18 planned targets, including an array of airfields, air defense facilities, ammunition depots and military training sites. Three Air Force C-17 cargo planes dropped humanitarian rations inside Afghanistan, he said.

U.S. warplanes eased their bombardment after dawn Friday, Islam's holy day. In Pakistan, a Taliban official said his side had nothing to fear from U.S. commandos.

"Fifteen or 20 troops will be able to do nothing," embassy spokesman Sohail Shaheen said. "If they want to send in soldiers, they should send in 100,000. Then it can be a fight between our soldiers and theirs."

President Bush's national security adviser declined to discuss the special forces' activities in Afghanistan. "I cannot talk about what special operations are doing," Condoleezza Rice said on CNN from China, where Bush is attending an Asia-Pacific economic meeting.

On ABC's "Good Morning America," she said: "We have (been) and are paving the way for friendly forces."

Signs that special forces were ready to go or might already be inside Afghanistan have been building all week. The Navy's USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean, was loaded with special forces last weekend.

And an Air Force special operations AC-130 gunship on Monday began attacking in southern Afghanistan. The high-firepower AC-130s typically give close air cover to forces already on the ground or going in for small-unit operations.

Bush refused to confirm the presence of U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan but said, "We will use whatever means are necessary to achieve our objective."

Vice President Dick Cheney said Thursday night that airstrikes since Oct. 7 against terrorist camps and military targets have made possible a new phase of the war.

"The success of our air campaign has cleared the way for further action which the Taliban and terrorists can neither predict nor escape," he said in a speech in New York.

Special operations troops specialize in undercover search-and-destroy missions, quick commando raids, psychological warfare and training of friendly local forces.

Rumsfeld said Thursday airstrikes alone will not be enough to rid Afghanistan of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Rumsfeld said "you cannot really do sufficient damage" with air power alone. Warplanes "can't crawl around on the ground and find people."

Rice said there was evidence that "we are beginning to really degrade the military capability of the Taliban."

"The president is determined that when this war is done that Afghanistan will not be territory from which one can launch and train and house and abet terrorists."