Rumsfeld, Touring Area, Drops In on Afghanistan

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld slipped into Afghanistan on Sunday and met with interim leader Hamid Karzai in a show of confidence in a military campaign that continued to rain bombs on Al Qaeda fighters 80 miles away in the snow-capped mountains near Tora Bora.

Descending in the only passenger plane to make a daytime landing in Afghanistan since the war began, Rumsfeld became the first senior Bush administration official to touch ground in the embattled nation since the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center spawned the first war of the 21st century.

The secretary earlier visited a base near Afghanistan from which U.S. soldiers and attack helicopters have launched recent strikes, then swooped into the newly seized Bagram air base, north of the capital, Kabul, raising cheers of “Hoo-ah!” from throngs of soldiers who met him at each stop.

“When the United States of America is attacked, there needs to be a penalty for that. And that is, in fact, your assignment,” Rumsfeld told an energetic group of soldiers from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division, the Air Force and special operations forces in a country that reporters were requested not to identify because it did not want its aid revealed.

The secretary urged the U.S. service personnel to think of the crumbled twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.

“They’re still burning as we sit here. They’re still bringing bodies out,” said Rumsfeld, wearing a black windbreaker with a red U.S. Special Operations Command insignia.

“Fortunately, the caves and tunnels of Tora Bora are also burning--and thanks to the work that you’re doing.”

Sunday’s visit to Afghanistan was a kind of advance victory tour. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, which is directing the war, plans to attend a ceremony inaugurating Afghanistan’s interim government. But the ongoing war has left this country pocked with unsafe territory. The pilot of Rumsfeld’s plane circled Bagram air base rather than flying in directly, to remain out of range of the hundreds of Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles still cached throughout the nation.

The lumbering C-17 jet touched down on an airstrip bordered by two fields of uncleared land mines, one of which recently exploded and injured a souvenir-hunting British soldier, according to one of his colleagues. Reporters who were invited to join Rumsfeld’s six-day tour of Europe and Central Asia were not told of the stop until they were en route.

Shortly after arriving, the Defense secretary met for the first time with incoming Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Qassim Fahim, Northern Alliance official Younis Qanooni and Karzai, an ethnic Pushtun tribal leader who will become the leader of Afghanistan’s interim government Saturday.

Rumsfeld and Karzai conferred in a room on the second floor of an unused hangar whose cement roof was covered with dozens of basketball-sized holes from American bombs. Outside stood the battered hulks of bomb-damaged planes. Rumsfeld and his military aides posed a stark contrast to Karzai, in a flowing striped turquoise robe and karakul cap, and the bearded colleagues in khaki uniforms who sat beside him in a ring of folding chairs.

A handful of journalists briefly peered in as Karzai thanked the United States for freeing Afghanistan from the Taliban and from Al Qaeda, whom he referred to as Arabs. Many Afghans wanted to fight them but were “somehow incapacitated,” he said.

“Our very fine commander, [Ahmed Shah] Masoud, a martyred man, was killed by Arabs. Imagine, they considered themselves the rulers of Afghanistan,” Karzai said in lightly accented English.

“Your being involved, the way you provided help for us, was the opportunity that we wanted. You liberated Afghanistan.”

Reassuring his new ally, Rumsfeld replied, “There was no question but that the United States had no interest in territory.”

In an interview afterward, Rumsfeld described Karzai as intelligent, thoughtful and deeply concerned about Afghanistan’s future.

“He is anxious to be cooperative with us in every way,” Rumsfeld said.

Among the dozen or so officials in the room was the United States’ newly appointed ambassador to Afghanistan, James Dobbins. Dobbins will become the first ambassador to occupy the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Kabul, since the State Department withdrew its staff and welded the doors shut in 1989.

Although some buildings on the grounds have been damaged and used by squatters since then, the main structure has suffered little internal damage, said an Army major who identified himself only as Scott and who visited the compound earlier this month. Scavengers had taken up carpet and furnishings, he said, but medicines remained untouched in cabinets and photographs of presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush hung on the walls. Even as Taliban soldiers battled U.S.-backed rebels, they failed to remove a Marine Corps banner.

Among the hundreds of soldiers at the Bagram base are contingents from the British Royal Marines, the Army 10th Mountain Division and the Special Operations Command in Tampa, Fla. Some wore desert camouflage Sunday. Others, like the supply officer who wanted to blend in better with the locals when making military purchases, sported colorful Afghan sweaters, the beginnings of beards and scruffy hair beneath woolen hats. Out of sight were the Russians and Iranians who occasionally visit the base as part of a nonmilitary mission to dole out humanitarian aid to Afghans.

“The beard is more of a respect type of thing,” said a major from the 96th Civil Affairs Battalion at Ft. Bragg, N. C., who under a military policy also identified himself by only his first name, Kevin. “We’re not trying to fool anyone.”

Rumsfeld said that he made the visit because it is important that the United States and Karzai’s interim administration agree on the military campaign and other issues but also because he wanted to praise the troops.

“We’ve got a lot of people who’ve been out here doing a great job,” he said. “We need to understand what they’ve been doing and how they’ve been doing it and what they think about it.”