U.S. Forces Reason With Afghan Elders To Uncover Hidden Al-Qaida Weapons

European Stars and Stripes | June 26, 2002 | Joseph Giordono

[Stand Watch Listen]

BAGRAM, Afghanistan — U.S. Special Forces are successfully employing a new tactic to get Afghans to turn over weapons hidden in their villages: logic.

And a little muscle never hurts, either.

Using leverage afforded by superior firepower, Special Forces teams are now "negotiating" with village elders to turn over hidden weapons caches. As a result, they are making some of their biggest weapons cache seizures in months, military officials and field soldiers said Tuesday.

"It would be better for everybody concerned. You don’t need these weapons anymore, you’re not fighting anybody, why don’t you turn them in?" said U.S spokesman Col. Roger King, paraphrasing the reasoning used by forces in the field.

It has been a "compelling" argument, he said.

In recent weeks, U.S. and British forces have captured some of the largest weapons caches yet. Instead of combing the hills in hit-or-miss searches, troops are getting specific information from villagers.

"We’ll go into a village, meet with the elders, and convince them that it’s in their best interests to turn over any weapons they have or might have knowledge of," said Sgt. Carl, a bearded Special Forces trooper who had just returned to Bagram from a few days in the field.

"It’s a bit easier to make that argument when they know you can call in airstrikes or take them into custody," he said.

King made it clear that neither the U.S. military nor any "other agency" personnel is paying for the weapons.

Military officials, pointing to Monday’s large weapons seizure, said they don’t have to.

A special operations forces team operating in the Paktika province was directed to a weapons cache that included a dozen 107 mm rockets and 41 rocket-propelled grenades.

The same team was directed to a second location, where they found a 107 mm rocket launcher, a 57 mm Howitzer cannon, a 76 mm Howitzer with rounds, a 107 mm tube launcher with 81 rockets, an 82 mm mortar with 55 rounds, 22 anti personnel mines and 2 large caliber machine guns with thousands of rounds of ammunition.

In both cases, military officials said, village elders approached the special operations teams and negotiated a planned surrender of the weapons.

While it is not clear who owned the weapons, it is likely that the villagers were keeping them for Taliban and al-Qaida forces, King said.

"I only know that the village elders decided the weapons were not in their best interest and they wanted them gone," King said.

But the U.S. military continues to keep the media far from the teams finding the weapons. While British forces have repeatedly escorted media members to the sites of large finds, U.S. officials have so far declined to do so.

Military officials say the captured weapons are either destroyed or handed over to the fledgling Afghan National Army.

All of their successes in recent weeks have not stopped attacks on U.S. forward positions.

On Monday night, a special operations forces team came under fire from two mortar emplacements, King said. The team returned fire with its own mortars, before calling in close air support.

Two FA-18 Hornets were scrambled to the area and dropped two bombs, effectively ending the engagement, King said. He would not elaborate on where the jets were based or what kind of munitions they dropped.

A battle damage assessment was ongoing, and the team on the ground was still trying to determine the identity of the attackers and the effectiveness of the air support.

[Free the USA]

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