USMC WWIIUSMC
US SEALS
Posted on 09/24/2002 7:33:08 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
CORONADO -- The occupants of the multistory fortress perched at 13,000 feet in the Afghan mountains had no idea they were being watched.For several days in February, the people inside the suspected al-Qaida and Taliban stronghold were monitored by members of a U.S.-led special operations unit called Task Force K-Bar. They reluctantly emerged from the fortress at Ali Kheyl when helicopter gunships swooped overhead in the middle of the night and ordered them out.
It was then the U.S. special operations troops breathed a sigh of relief: The operation revealed the occupants of the fortress included 56 children.
"It averted a tragedy," said Lt. Cmdr. Darryn James, a spokesman for the Navy SEALs. "That probably happened more than people think."
The children had not been seen until then because their parents weren't allowing them outside in the bitter Afghan winter. Their discovery was made possible by deployment of a new kind of versatile, special operations unit known as K-Bar.
Defense analysts say the United States may come to increasingly rely on such units as the military realigns itself to fight the war on terrorism.
The Ali Kheyl mission was one of about 75 carried out by the 1,300 U.S. commandos in K-Bar and their counterparts from seven countries under the command of Commodore Robert S. Harward, a veteran Navy SEAL, who recently provided a briefing on the unit.
In a first, K-Bar's troops worked hand-in-hand with FBI agents who were brought in to help determine which prisoners should be let go and which were "keepers" headed for further interrogation, Harward said.
Special operations forces have played support roles before. But in Afghanistan, commanders gave K-Bar far wider latitude and more authority as it rooted out al-Qaida and Taliban from mountain hideouts.
"They were taking the war to the terrorist network," James said. "K-Bar special operators have done more to prevent another Sept. 11 than almost anyone else."
Between October and the end of March, K-Bar -- named for a military knife used by SEALs -- took 107 detainees and tallied at least 115 confirmed enemy deaths, Harward said from his office at Naval Special Warfare headquarters in Coronado.
In Harward, K-Bar had a well-traveled commander who learned fluent Farsi in his youth in Tehran, Iran, where his father worked in the U.S. embassy. During a summer off from high school, he had hitchhiked through Afghanistan, but the land he saw during Operation Enduring Freedom had become much harsher, drier and poorer.
"It just seems like it had worn very hard," he said. "I think hope did not exist in their vocabulary."
In its size and scope, K-Bar -- the vision of Rear Adm. Bert Calland, now in charge of Navy SEALs -- added a new page to the playbook of the U.S. military, which in the past typically used Army, Navy and Air Force commandos in small numbers with limited support roles.
Missions included a search-and-destroy operation in January against a honeycomb complex of 70 caves near the Pakistani border. Inside, troops found piles of ammunition, tanks, rockets and communication equipment along with al-Qaida recruiting posters.
Hostile fighters fled the caves to nearby hills and K-Bar forces called in carrier-based Navy airstrikes, killing an unknown number of al-Qaida members.
"It's what I call the 'Gilligan's Island' operation. It started out as seven hours and ended up being nine days," said Harward, a rock-ribbed 46-year-old with deep-set blue eyes.
In late February, K-Bar captured Mullah Khairullah Kahirkawa, a former Taliban governor, Harward said. The night operation was put together with 30 minutes' notice when unmanned aircraft spotted a convoy leaving a compound where Khairullah was believed to be, he said.
As they struck deeper into al-Qaida's power structure, K-Bar began to see a new kind of enemy emerge.
Pointing to a photo his men took of an al-Qaida surveillance post high in the mountains, Harward said matter-of-factly: "We saw here, for the first time, when we killed these guys, these were not the dark-skinned Afghans. These were the red-haired, white-faced Chechens." The suspected al-Qaida members, who appeared to be well-funded and well-equipped, wore Adidas shoes as they manned an anti-helicopter weapon, Harward said.
K-Bar attracted some unwanted attention in a Jan. 23 raid at Hazar Qadam that killed about a dozen people who turned out not to be al-Qaida or Taliban. But who they were remains unclear. Harward said Afghanistan is a place where the line between friend and foe is often blurred.
Harward said his men opened fire only after an Army Special Forces soldier was shot and wounded in the ankle.
"There were allegations that we shot people in their sleep, that we assassinated people," said Harward, who dismisses such claims. "If we want to assassinate someone, we just put two bullets in their head."
Harward said K-Bar's operations overall were a success, and validation of the extensive training poured into special operations forces, from rock climbing to underwater swimming to cold-weather training in Alaska.
"We won the war in Afghanistan with relatively a small number of guys on the ground because they had those skill sets that are so important," Harward said.
To analysts, it's no surprise that the U.S. military tapped the Navy's "Sea, Air, Land" teams, who usually work with one foot in the water, to head up a force fighting in one of the world's few landlocked countries.
"It reflects the diversity of the training they get," said Ron O'Rourke, a naval analyst with Congressional Research Service. "They're not just swimmers and divers but they're trained to do other things once they get inland."
Some analysts maintain that U.S. weapons would have been of little use in Afghanistan without special operations forces on the ground to guide them to target.
James noted that at Zhawar Kili, special operators found craters outside the entrance to a mountain cave and scorch marks from U.S. cruise missiles launched in 1998 by President Clinton against Osama bin Laden, but the insides of the caves were untouched.
"Because the country is so primitive, without people on the ground to collect intelligence, find targets and get a good feel for the ebb and flow of combat, we simply would not have had the information we needed to prevail," said Dr. Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute.
Harward, a former fellow at the RAND think-tank in Santa Monica, said he sees Afghanistan as the first battle in the war on terrorism.
"I think it's going to be a long war. ... What people don't understand is we're dealing with a whole different enemy. Time is irrelevant to them. Targets are everywhere," he said.
"If you think it's hard to get on a plane now. If you think the stock market's had repercussions now, the potential is greater than ever."
Pretty well sums up Clinton's efforts on combating terrorsim...
Commodore Robert S. Harward
I didn't know the Navy still had that rank.
No comment.
Too bad that for anything that he DID try to do, he was accused of doing it in order to divert attention from the Monica Lewinski affair..
Harward, a rock-ribbed 46-year-old with deep-set blue eyes
There were allegations that we shot people in their sleep, that we assassinated people," said Harward, who dismisses such claims. "If we want to assassinate someone, we just put two bullets in their head."
I think I'm in love.
If I'm spelling that right.
(steely)
res ipsa loquitur- Latin. "the thing speaks for itself"
"Too bad"? Hardly. Clinton deserves every bit of criticism that he receives on this topic. If he had been focused on doing his job and been less obsessed with getting his horn scraped, there would've been no scandal. Had that been the case, those missile attacks would be seen as merely inadequate, rather than being self-serving above all. Either way, the SEALs would still be out there now, taking care of business.
< Pedantic mode = ON > The K-Bar was a USMC implement of destruction, issued in WWII and Korea and discontinued afterward. The SEALS use a number of different knives, but the K-Bar itself was only recently put back into limited production after a hiatus of some years. The big complaint against the K-Bar was that its severely clipped tip, while useful for opening C-ration cans, was somewhat delicate for a killing instrument, and caused a curvature that put the tip off the center of thrust. Most old Marines I know would rather be caught without their pants than without their trusty K-Bar... < pedantic mode = OFF >
USMC WWIIUSMC
US SEALS
FBI this, FBI that. A friend of mine who is a US Customs special agent has spent a lot of time in Afghanistan and Guantanamo (and elsewhere) in the past year or so for the purpose of tracking terrorist financial networks. I wonder which Madison Avenue PR firm has the FBI contract??
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