http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/03/international/03MILI.html?todaysheadlines


November 3, 2001

SPECIAL FORCES

Crash Injures 4 Assisting Secret Mission

By STEVEN LEE MYERS and JAMES DAO

ASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — An Air Force Special
Operations helicopter crashed during a night time incursion into northern Afghanistan today, injuring four crew members, one of them seriously, in what the Pentagon said was a weather-related accident.

A second helicopter accompanying the one that crashed rescued the
injured crew members and spirited them out of Afghan territory after
the accident, which officials blamed on severe weather and not
enemy fire, according to a statement released tonight by officials at
the Pentagon.

The crash occurred as the Pentagon has mounted an increasing
number of risky Special Operations missions inside Afghanistan in
order to intensify the air campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban
rulers as winter and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approach.

The injured airmen, who were not identified, were being treated at
an undisclosed location in the region, but their injuries were not life-
threatening, the officials said.

Navy F-14 fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt
in the Arabian Sea quickly swooped in and fired on the damaged
helicopter, destroying it along with highly the classified equipment it was carrying, the Pentagon statement said.

The Pentagon provided few details about the crash, which occurred at roughly 11 p.m. local time, such as its
precise location, citing the secrecy of Special Operations moves generally and today's mission in particular.

But military officials said the helicopters involved were MH-53 Pave Lows
operated by Air Force Special Operations forces. Those helicopters are
designed to insert and remove elite Air Force commandos, including target
spotters, deep behind enemy lines without detection. The officials indicated
that additional operations were continuing and risked being compromised.

The Pentagon said that foul weather in northern Afghanistan, including
freezing rain, hampered American air strikes and in at least one case
prevented other helicopters from ferrying additional Special Forces into areas
controlled by rebel forces opposed to the Taliban.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said earlier this week that the
Pentagon wanted to expand the number of those elite commandos from
about two dozen to as many as 100, but had been slowed by sandstorms,
ground fire from Taliban troops and poor coordination with rebel
commanders.

A small number of American Special Forces have been operating for several
days in territory held by the coalition of rebel forces known as the Northern
Alliance, helping to re-supply the insurgents and to improve the accuracy of American bombing raids against
Taliban front-line forces.

Pentagon officials have credited the Special Forces on the ground with improving the targeting of American air
strikes against Taliban forces arrayed in jagged front lines in northern Afghanistan, though opposition leaders
have reported varying degrees of effects on the Taliban.

In a separate accident, the United Central Command said tonight that an RQ-1 Predator unpiloted
reconnaissance aircraft was reported missing in Afghanistan at 2:15 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, today and
presumably crashed. Military officials blamed the incident on the bad weather, and said they had no plans to
recover the aircraft.

Despite poor weather conditions on Thursday, American fighter jets and bombers continued to pound those
Taliban positions in the north, as they have repeatedly for several days, possibly in preparation for an
offensive by the Northern Alliance.

At least four B-52's, each carrying dozens of 500-pound bombs, conducted heavy bombing raids today,
according to Pentagon officials, and thunderous blasts were reported near Taliban positions on the road north
of Kabul.

At the Pentagon, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said that 65 aircraft, including naval jets and heavy bombers, struck nine different target areas in the 24 hours
before midnight Thursday. Officials said strikes on a similar scale continued today across Afghanistan, not just
on the front line.

As American bombers continued to hit Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan, senior Pentagon officials said
today that intelligence reports showed early signs of a rebellion in the Taliban's stronghold in the south, raising
hopes of a second front.

An anti-Taliban leader, Hamid Karzai, was reported to have battled with Taliban forces in a central Afghan
province called Uruzgan this week. While it was impossible to verify that, officials at the Pentagon cited the
reports as a hopeful sign of nascent resistance to the Taliban after 27 days of bombing.

Mr. Rumsfeld has repeatedly cited "southern tribes" belonging to the same Pashtun ethnic group as the
Taliban's leaders as an essential element of undercutting the Taliban's power. Pentagon officials cautioned that
what resistance there is in the south at this point is far less organized than in the north, where a loose alliance
of rebel forces hold roughly 10 percent of the country.

While American Special Forces are already operating in the north, American support in the south has largely
been organized and run by the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said.

Admiral Stufflebeem pointed to another reason why the Pentagon has moved cautiously in putting Special
Forces on the ground in the north: American commanders do not know many of the Northern Alliance leaders
they are dealing with, or whether they can trust them.

"You have to get in there with them and build trust or learn to trust," Admiral Stufflebeem said, "and once you
see how they operate, you then know whom you can trust and whom you probably should not."

At the White House, President Bush said that the American-led campaign, now nearly four weeks old, was
progressing — "tightening the net on the enemy," as he put it.

"We're making it harder for the enemy to communicate; we're making it harder for the enemy to protect
themselves; we're making it harder for the enemy to hide," Mr. Bush said during an appearance with Nigeria's
president, Olusegun Obasanjo. "And we're going to get him, and them."

He also added his voice to those who say the bombing would not necessarily stop for Ramadan. At the same
time, the president urged patience.

"This is not an instant gratification war," he said.