Terrorists Begin Spring Offensive in Afghanistan
By Andrew Cochran
Writing on the New York Daily News blog "Mouth of the Potomac," reporter James Gordon Meek has written a timely summary of recent action by Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan indicating the start of their spring offensive. Meek has embedded there often and maintains contact with soldiers stationed there. On March 25, insurgents attacked a U.S. Special Forces camp near Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan, Firebase Tillman, which is named after the late NFL star Pat Tillman and is one of the areas in which Meek has embedded. Meek mentions recent as-Sahab videos purportedly showing attacks on American bases - you can see three still shots from one such video on the SITE Institute website.
Here is more of Meek's excellent post:
"The attack that night was significant for two reasons. One, it's rare to see a ground force of jihadis directly strike any well-protected U.S. base in Iraq or Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden's As-Sahab propaganda wing had also released five separate Internet videos since the first of the year -- along with two additional videos released immediately after the attack -- depicting rocket barrages on Lwara, according to the SITE Institute.
Several other videos released by As-Sahab in recent weeks have shown purported ambushes of U.S. convoys near Khowst, a large town about 10 miles northwest of Lwara that is home to the large U.S. forward operating base called Salerno. Other recent propaganda videos depicted attacks near an American base in border town Orgun-E, which is within 15 miles of both Tillman and Salerno.
This part of Paktika Province is known as a direct route for Arab-led Pashtun militia traversing from Pakistan's tribal agency North Waziristan into Afghanistan. Taliban forces predominantly fight in the south, while Pashtun tribal militias commanded by Al Qaeda-linked warlords such as Bin Laden pals Jalaluddin Haqqani and ex-Afghan premier Gulbuddin Hekmatyar fight in the eastern border. (Haqqani and Hekmatyar also were CIA allies in the war against the Soviets.)
U.S. military officials offer little public explanation for why Al Qaeda is heaping so much attention on Firebase Tillman, where I lived for eight days during a rare special operations embed in August 2005. But they suggested the videos are lies.
"It would be wrong for us to assume that the seven videos you say have been released all took place this year and were directed at Firebase Tillman," said SFC Dean Welch, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-82 in Afghanistan. "I think a better perception would be that Al Qaeda has released video of indirect fire attacks, not necessarily on this particular base or even in this region."
Welch said Al Qaeda is "trying to get as much mileage as possible" with its propaganda and added that it's "hard to find the logic in anything the enemy does."
Maybe so. But saying the enemy operates without logic sounds like a lot of comments made by top American military commanders in Afghanistan over the years, who chronically underestimated their enemy.
Camp Tillman was last attacked just before Christmas 2005 by about 100 fighters from the Miram Shah-based Haqqani network. In that incident, the enemy fighters quickly overran Observation Post-1 (and blew up a Soviet-era anti-aircraft gun) on a hilltop overlooking the camp, and were within reach of penetrating the camp itself before being driven back by a counterattack, according to sources who were firing rounds downrange that night in 2005.
About 35 enemy fighters were killed with the help of infantry small-arms, artillery, B-52 bombers, armed Predator drones and Apache attack helicopters. In the March 25 attack, an estimated 30 fighters fired on Firebase Tillman and six were killed, according to Welch. (The number of enemy fighters killed was alleged to be a dozen when CJTF-82 first announced the firefight.)
Unlike in previous years, when Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters hibernated during Afghanistan's chilly months, this past winter saw a marginal let-up in fighting. A well-placed American counterterrorism official in Afghanistan said that "suicide bombings in Kabul now average roughly four to five a week."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday was asked by reporters about the enemy offensive, but replied that the U.S. and NATO have launched their own warm weather offensive called Operation Achilles.
"The spring offensive is definitely underway, but the current military strategy is designed to keep [Al Qaeda and the Taliban] off balance," the U.S. counterterrorism official in Afghanistan said. "There seems to be a new aggressiveness. A decision was made to take the fight to them instead of reacting to their Spring offensive."
While Taliban forces battle NATO troops in southern Afghanistan, the latest enemy offensive has even touched the American military command at Bagram Airfield, an hour's drive north of Kabul. In late February during a visit by Vice President Cheney, a suicide bomber struck the main gate and killed a score of people, including Army Pfc. Daniel Zizumbo, 27, of Chicago, who joined the Army after failing to find a civilian job following a stint in the Marines, according to press reports.
Three days after the battle at Tillman, where two soldiers were wounded, CJTF-82 reported that a single rocket had exploded harmlessly on Bagram's flightline. I've slept in a rickety tent on that same flightline, so I can appreciate the seriousness of a rocket strike. But why issue a press release? Officials wouldn't explain. But CJTF-82 spokesman MSG Christopher Fletcher did admit that "most of our bases do receive indirect fire a few times a month."
"We've had approximately 30 rocket attacks in the past month" in Eastern Afghanistan, Fletcher said in an e-mail. "The most affected areas were our forward operating bases and firebases in Paktika and Kunar provinces."
It seems Spring has arrived.