Suspected ‘Friendly Fire’ Case Disclosed

The first U.S. soldier killed in Operation Anaconda this month in Afghanistan may have been hit by fire from an American warplane, in an attack that caused a major setback in the battle, the Pentagon disclosed Friday.

The Pentagon also released a report that acknowledges some errors--but largely defends the military’s conduct--in a series of “friendly fire” and other “incidents that warranted review” in Afghanistan.

Initially thought to be the victim of enemy mortar fire, Army Chief Warrant Officer Stanley L. Harriman of Wade, N.C., may instead have been killed when an AC-130 gunship strafed a convoy in which Harriman was traveling in the early hours of Operation Anaconda on March 2.

At the time, the attack on Harriman’s convoy was blamed for a full-scale retreat by the Afghan forces with whom he and other American Special Forces soldiers were riding.

In addition to prompting criticism of the Afghan fighters, the retreat enabled Al Qaeda forces to concentrate on U.S. infantrymen. It was a serious setback on the first day of what became the biggest infantry battle of the war.

Although the incident is still under investigation, Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, said Friday that the plane radioed that it had “engaged” an enemy convoy at the same moment that Harriman’s unit reported it was under attack.

If Franks’ suspicions are confirmed, the incident would raise the number of U.S. friendly-fire fatalities in Afghanistan to four, military officials said. Fourteen Americans have been killed in combat or hostile situations, and 19 others have been killed in aircraft crashes or other accidents.

During a briefing at the Pentagon, Franks disputed reports that large numbers of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters had escaped U.S. forces in Operation Anaconda or that thousands of Al Qaeda and Taliban loyalists were gathering in Pakistan. “There are not thousands of Al Qaeda regrouping . . . whether it’s Pakistan or anyplace else,” he said.

But Franks acknowledged that allied forces don’t appear to have come close to apprehending or killing Osama bin Laden, Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammed Omar or other top members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

“I do not have credible evidence that any one of these principals has been missed by a day or two,” Franks said. “I have not seen anything that convinces me if we’d only been a little quicker, we’d have had him.”

Franks provided a status report on 10 military investigations, some ongoing.

In general, the document acknowledges communications failures and other procedural breakdowns but avoids assigning blame and defends the military’s handling of incidents in which allied fighters or Afghan civilians were killed.

Several cases center on deadly mistakes made while trying to distinguish friend from foe. The new details on Harriman’s death underscore the confusing circumstances allied forces continue to confront in a war in which U.S. troops are often embedded in Afghan militias.

Harriman, 34, was driving a pickup truck in a caravan moving slowly across muddy terrain toward the Shahi Kot valley in eastern Afghanistan early on March 2 when the convoy came under fire so intense, some survivors later wondered whether they’d stumbled into an ambush. Harriman and two Afghan fighters were killed almost immediately, and two dozen others were wounded.

To fighters in the caravan, Franks said, it would have been difficult to distinguish fire from an AC-130 from the mortar rounds or rocket-propelled grenades that the Taliban and Al Qaeda have used.

The report shed little light on the war’s deadliest friendly-fire incident, a Dec. 5 strike by a B-52 bomber that killed three Green Berets and about 25 Afghan fighters in Showali Kowt, near the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in Afghanistan’s south.

In several other prominent and still disputed cases, the Pentagon all but rules out accepting responsibility for any wrongdoing.

At least 16 Afghans were killed, and 27 taken into custody, before U.S. forces realized that the compounds targeted didn’t house any Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. Franks said Friday that the deaths were “regrettable” but that U.S. forces were fired upon first.

The report repeats an earlier claim that a Red Cross warehouse bombed in October “had a long and continuous association with Afghan military activities” and that the Red Cross failed to include the structure on a list of sites provided to the military before the bombing began.