Emphasis on Small, Covert Operations

After collecting pledges of support and dispatching more troops and weaponry to the Middle East, the Bush administration appears increasingly ready to launch military action against Afghanistan’s Taliban regime.

But officials say the most important action is likely to be small, not large; covert, not visible. The size and nature of the troop deployments--modest by recent standards--confirms that no large-scale ground invasion is planned.

Instead, U.S. forces are likely to launch airstrikes against suspected terrorist camps, Taliban command centers and communications facilities with three main objectives: to disrupt operations, weaken the Taliban and--with luck--flush terrorist leader Osama bin Laden into the open.

Understandably, officials refuse to describe military plans in any detail or to suggest when action might begin. One aide noted that it is unlikely to be this weekend, if only because Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are just returning from trips to the region.

Rumsfeld has taken pains to preach patience over a much longer term and to stress that the most important actions in the war against terrorism may be intelligence coups, not military strikes.

“This effort . . . undoubtedly will prove to be a lot more like a cold war than a hot war,” he told reporters Thursday in Egypt. “In the Cold War it took 50 years, plus or minus. It did not involve major battles. It involved continuous pressure . . . and when it ended, it ended not with a bang, but through internal collapse.”

Still, the outlines of what the United States plans for Afghanistan as the first phase of that long war gradually are becoming clear.

The U.S. forces sent to the region since terrorists attacked New York City and the Pentagon on Sept. 11 are only modest in size, but heavily concentrated on two functions: bombing and special operations.

Among the aircraft dispatched to the region are F-15E fighter bombers, F-16 fighters, B-52 bombers and B-1 long-range bombers. The Air Force also has positioned tanker aircraft between the United States and Afghanistan to refuel warplanes.

Troops posted to the region include elite Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs, forces trained to conduct covert small-unit operations.

On Friday, about 1,000 troops of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division were dispatched to Uzbekistan, reportedly to provide support and search-and-rescue capability if any special operations units run into problems.

In addition to two aircraft carriers already in the Arabian Sea, the Pentagon has dispatched a third, the Kitty Hawk, to serve as a mobile offshore base for helicopter-borne ground troops. The Kitty Hawk was expected to arrive by today.

As of Friday, a Defense Department official said, about 29,000 U.S. troops and 349 military aircraft were in the Middle East, up from about 15,000 troops and 220 aircraft before Sept. 11.

By comparison, about 32,000 U.S. troops participated in the 1999 war over the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, and about 532,000 troops served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War against Iraq--in both cases, joined by thousands of allied forces.

Unlike the Persian Gulf War, there is no sign that the United States plans to invade and occupy Afghan territory. Instead, the CIA has been offering financial and potential military support to Afghan tribal leaders and opposition groups from several ethnic groups for their assistance on the ground, officials said.

The aim of U.S. military operations already has shifted from the initial focus on capturing or killing Bin Laden, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Officials have carefully avoided claiming that their special operations units are sure to catch Bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

Instead, they say with increasing candor that their aim is to topple the Taliban regime that has provided Bin Laden his base--and in the process disrupt the terrorist leaders’ lives, perhaps enough to force them into the open where they can be caught.

“People understand our goal,” a White House official said. “We just aren’t making it explicit in public.”

But experts outside the administration are free to be more candid.

“What you see is what you get,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a military expert at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution in Washington. “We’re positioning as many forces as possible to take maximum opportunity of the first wave of bombing attacks.”

The problem with bombing a country as primitive as Afghanistan, O’Hanlon noted, is that “targets are few and far between. . . . There’s no reason to think airstrikes would be debilitating.”

But airstrikes can serve two other purposes, he said: They can weaken the Taliban regime in its ground war with Afghan opposition groups, and they potentially can flush Bin Laden and his associates out of hiding.

“Bombing will create chaos and uncertainty,” he said. “And that provides opportunities: opportunities to listen as they come out of their holes; opportunities to learn where they are.”

At some point, a former senior official agreed, “You hope you get the ‘intel hit’ “--a fix on Bin Laden’s location, allowing a direct strike against him.

But the right combination of bombing, special operations and Afghan opposition fighting on the ground may take some time, which is why the Bush administration sought diplomatic support from many countries and the right to use bases in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Oman.

“The diplomacy has been very impressive, but I think the diplomacy is pretty much complete now,” said L. Paul Bremer III, a former State Department counter-terrorism chief. “Until now, there have been political arguments for holding off. But the only thing that needs to be done now is for the military to assure the president that he has adequate forces in place to launch hostilities. And I would expect that will begin soon.”

Along the way, the United States has acquired two more missions: feeding millions of starving Afghans inside and outside the ravaged nation’s borders, and stabilizing a new Afghan government if and when the Taliban falls.

President Bush embraced the first humanitarian mission enthusiastically this week, announcing $320 million in food aid--some of which likely will be dropped inside the country by air.

Rumsfeld said he had “no doubt” that airdrops would occur, but said they would come only after it was clear that the Taliban’s antiaircraft weapons--including Stinger missiles initially supplied by the CIA during the country’s conflict with the Soviets--”would not pose a problem.”

As for the longer-term reconstruction of Afghanistan, Bush tried to turn that aside, telling reporters, “We don’t do nation-building.”

But his own aides began focusing on that mission last week, and a senior State Department official, Richard Haass, was dispatched to Rome to talk with Afghanistan’s 86-year-old deposed king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who has offered to help form a new government.

“We don’t do nation-building, but we may have to do some in this case,” said Arnold Kanter, who was a senior official in former President Bush’s administration. “We wouldn’t feel good if the outcome of our action is a bunch of warlords going after each other again. . . . But even if you accept only modest criteria for a new Afghan government--that it treat its people humanely and not harbor terrorists--it’s not a gimme.”