As the US prepares for war on Iraq, its troops in Afghanistan are coming under increasing attack from the forces they were sent to dig out
American forces in Afghanistan have suffered a series of setbacks during 2002, and a year after the fall of the Taliban the US army is under almost daily attack in its bases in eastern Afghanistan.
Several US-led attacks, using hundreds and even thousands of troops, have been ineffective, suffered outright defeat, or resulted in disaster. These failures have led the US to keep its forces mostly inside their bases: at Khost and Kandahar they are under attack almost daily from missiles and machine guns.
When it was launched in March, the US gave Operation Anaconda maximum publicity. It was supposed to crush remaining al-Qaida forces. Locally recruited Afghans were trained to act as “beaters”, driving al-Qaida from its high mountain caves on to the guns of US soldiers lying in ambush. The reality was that it was the US army that was ambushed.
According to the Washington Post and other US reports, the plan was betrayed to the enemy through the Afghan militias. At a dozen mountain passes, al-Qaida attacked US and allied forces as they jumped from their helicopters to take up what they thought would be their own ambush positions. So intense was the enemy fire that for two days the US could not fly in helicopters to support its own troops, who remained pinned down in vicious fighting. The US had eight men killed and 100 wounded before al-Qaida pulled back.
It began operations intended to dig out enemy forces from the villages of eastern Afghanistan. Newsweek described as “a disaster” its first high-profile mission, quoting other US troops and civilian witnesses. They said that 600 soldiers had gone on the rampage in Operation Mountain Sweep, undoing in minutes six months of community building. They went through villages “as if Bin Laden was in every house”, said one of the US army’s own special forces soldiers. So serious were the complaints from other units about the conduct of the 82nd airborne that the army took sworn statements from all the officers and senior NCOs involved. The civilian casualties have not been accounted for. The 82nd is continuing to conduct cordon and search operations and has reduced media access.
US strategy appears to be limited to continuing to pay local warlords to keep the peace, but these efforts have not even been enough to get control of the opium crop, which has this year produced some 2,000 tons of heroin destined for our streets.
US 82nd airborne useless!
What are these GI Fools doing in Afghanistan so called best of the best only thing they seem good at is bribing local warlords. KArzai the american stooge must have the most dangerous job in the World knowing onw of these days one of them bullets is gonna hit him sqaure in the head :2guns: