Making Themselves Feel Right at Home

By Simon Robinson Sunday, Apr. 21, 2002
    • The daily press briefing at Bagram air base, the allied command post north of Kabul, always begins with a reminder of why so many soldiers have gathered on this dusty plain. Coalition spokesman Major Bryan Hilferty numbers the days since Sept. 11, 2001, reminds reporters of the death toll and describes a victim. Last Friday, it was Michael Hannan, 34, of Lynbrook, N.Y., who, Hilferty said, "knew how to put people at ease and how to make them laugh. His daughters Rachel, 5, Alexandra, 22 months, and wife Andrea are left only with memories." Fifteen minutes later, Hilferty wrapped up the session with the two sentences that close every briefing: "The hunt continues. The war in Afghanistan is not over."

    Not over by a long shot. Last week more than 400 British Royal Marines from 3 Commando Brigade were helicoptered to 11,000 ft. up in the mountains around Shah-i-Kot in eastern Afghanistan for a five-day operation dubbed Ptarmigan (after a type of Scottish grouse known for its ability to camouflage itself and thrive at high altitudes). The objective: to sweep the area where Operation Anaconda, the biggest battle of the war, was fought last month. Though it was the third major ground search since the end of Anaconda, the Marines found previously undetected caches of ammunition and light arms. Radios, documents, maps and computer discs were found in caves and on the bodies of dead al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters, some of them booby-trapped. "There is evidence that the area had been reinfiltrated" since Anaconda, says Brigadier Roger Lane, commander of 3 Commando.


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    The U.S. believes there are hundreds--not thousands--of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters left in Afghanistan. Future missions are likely to involve small bands of soldiers taking on cells of terrorists in a slow, steady war of attrition. Many, perhaps most, of the bad guys are now in Pakistan and are unlikely to congregate in large numbers again. "Every operation is a combat operation," says Major General Franklin Hagenbeck, the U.S. commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan. "We're here to find them and destroy them."

    In the days after each mission, the commanders involved meet for a debriefing--called a "hot wash" because the facts are still so fresh--to share information and discuss lessons learned. Perhaps the most important knowledge so far came during the U.S. operation in Tora Bora last December, when Afghan allies proved ineffective as a fighting force. Rumors persist that Afghan soldiers allowed Osama bin Laden to slip away into Pakistan, a claim that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld denied again last week. Whether bin Laden escaped over the snow-capped mountains or not, U.S. forces now know that while "air power can do a lot, nothing beats soldiers on the ground," says Marine Captain Jeff Pool, a public-affairs officer at Bagram. "We say we never really own the ground until we have a soldier standing there."

    Despite all that has been learned, mistakes are still made. Last week four U.S. soldiers died when a rocket they were destroying exploded prematurely in the desert near Kandahar. Later a U.S. Air National Guard pilot killed four Canadians and seriously wounded eight others after mistaking muzzle flashes from a Canadian live-fire nighttime exercise for an enemy attack. The pilot dropped at least one 500-lb. laser-guided bomb on the allies.

    At Bagram--a modest airstrip expanded by the Soviets in the 1980s and currently used as the main in-country base for coalition forces--an air of permanence is taking hold. Soviet-era military debris--from MiG fighters to helmets--is being bulldozed into piles. The runway apron has been extended. Offices and a gym are under construction. The Post Exchange supply shop has begun to accept credit cards. There are even efforts to control the ever-present dust, a fine gray chalk that infiltrates everything--seams, food, mouths--and turns to slime at the slightest hint of rain. And while U.S. officers concede that the mission in Afghanistan has no end date, they do like to point to the fact that most of the new construction is in wood, not brick.