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US Delta Force Met Heavy Taliban Resistance
Twelve elite US Delta Force commandos were wounded by Taliban troops in an Oct. 20 raid in southern Afghanistan, and some American officers were angered by the Pentagon's film show of a separate parachute strike that night, according to a report released on Saturday.
Despite comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that resistance to the two raids was light, author Seymour Hersh wrote in The New Yorker magazine the Taliban surprised US forces with a fierce firefight at one target.
Hersh reported in the Nov. 12 issue the fight erupted as members of the elite and secret Delta Force emerged from a house in a compound near Kandahar sometimes used by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who was not there.
"It was like an ambush," he quoted one senior officer as saying. "The Taliban were firing light arms and either RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) or mortars."
It was "a tactical firefight, and the Taliban had the advantage," the officer told Hersh, who reported that 12 US commandos were wounded, three of them seriously.
Defense officials declined to comment on the Hersh report or discuss further details of last month's raids in response to questions from Reuters.
But Hersh, who earlier was the first to report that the United States was using missile-armed unmanned reconnaissance drones over Afghanistan, said some US officers were furious because the Pentagon showed reporters dramatic films of a separate parachute raid that night by Army Rangers on an airfield near Kandahar.
FILMS VIEWED WITH DISDAIN
Some officers and Delta Force troops viewed with disdain showing combat films of the jump and of Rangers on the ground instead of keeping such operations from public view, according to the report.
Hersh said the raids prompted bitter internal debate in the US military and caused the Central Command based in Tampa, Florida, to revisit plans for such strikes in Afghanistan.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters only hours after the Special Operations forces left Afghanistan last month that the raid was a success.
"There were casualties on the other side," said Myers, who added that there was only "light resistance" from Afghanistan's ruling Taliban military to the raids.
"Special Operations forces including US Army Rangers deployed to Afghanistan. They attacked and destroyed targets associated with terrorist activities and Taliban command and control," Myers said. He refused to say exactly how many troops were involved, but US officials said privately at the time the raids involved well over 100 soldiers.
Although the main purpose of the two raids was to seek intelligence information on the Taliban and al Qaeda network of fugitive Osama bin Laden, defense officials later acknowledged privately that documents and other material seized by the American troops provided little of major intelligence value.
Hersh noted that Britain's Sunday Telegraph reported on the day after the raids the United States had requested the immediate assignment to Afghanistan of the entire regiment of Britain's elite Special Air Service commandos.
Although Britain has openly committed several hundred special forces troops to the region, there has been no indication that such a large contingent might be sent.
One senior US military officer was quoted by Hersh as criticizing the planning for the Oct. 20 attacks as "Special Ops 101."
"I don't know where the adult supervision for these operations is," the officer added.
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