Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will visit Fort Bragg, North Carolina to congratulate the U.S. Special Forces today.
“I plan to go visit Fort Bragg… to salute the quick, resourceful, and powerful part of our campaign,” Rumsfeld said. “All of us at DoD [Department of Defense] are proud of this multi-service force.
“They have gathered information on enemy troop movements. They’ve found targets for U.S. aircraft. They’ve blockaded roads in search of fleeing Taliban leaders and al Qaeda leaders,” Rumsfeld added. “And last week, as you know, they – with the help of some folks in the Northern Alliance – Special Operations forces flew to safety some eight detainees that had been held for the past three months.”
Special Forces have been on the ground in Afghanistan advising Northern Alliance rebels and conducting support missions as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, the United States led war on global terrorism.
“For the most part, the Special Ops have been doing – making assessments and interdicting roads and looking for supplies moving north or south or east or west, attempting to prevent people that ought not to be going places from going places,” Rumsfeld said.
The United States will not negotiate or accept surrenders, according to the Pentagon. Citing a lack of suitable jails and insufficient numbers, Defense officials told reporters that troops will not accept surrenders.
“The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders,” Rumsfeld said. “Nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners. We have only handfuls of people there. We don’t have jails, we don’t have guards, we don’t have people who – we’re not in a position to have people surrender to us.”
However, Rumsfeld assured that people who try to surrender to U.S. troops will not be killed. Rather, soldiers will simply refuse the surrender.
“If people try to, we are declining. That is not what we’re there to do, is to begin accepting prisoners and impounding them in some way or making judgments,” Rumsfeld added. “That’s for the Northern Alliance and that’s for the tribes in the South to make their own judgments on that.”
The United States is not currently negotiating with anyone, Rumsfeld said. When asked to comment on reports of several Taliban leaders offering terms near Khandahar and Konduz, Rumsfeld explained that while U.S. troops are advising the Northern Alliance, they are not in control of them.
“The negotiations that are taking place are, for the most part, taking place with the opposition forces and elements that are putting pressure onto the various cities you’ve mentioned, whether it’s Kunduz or Kandahar or whichever,” Rumsfeld said. “That means that those discussions are taking place.
“Needless to say, we have some ongoing discussions with those forces, and it’s our hope that they will not engage in negotiations that would provide for the release of al Qaeda forces; that would provide for the release of foreign nationals, non-Afghans, leaving the country and destabilizing neighboring countries, which is not your first choice either,” Rumsfeld added. “The idea that they would keep their weapons is not a happy one from our standpoint, either. So, we are able to provide input into that process, but we’re not in a position of determining it or controlling it.”
The troops fighting the Northern Alliance around those cities are not just Taliban regulars, the Pentagon said.
“The fierceness of the fight up there suggests that they are, for the most part, not Afghans – that they are al Qaeda or people from other countries that have been supporting Taliban or al Qaeda,” Rumsfeld explained. “The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect. So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner.”
Military action will continue in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld said. U.S. planes are targeting the networks of tunnels and caves in the mountains of Afghanistan.
“We have been targeting caves and tunnels and closing them up, and getting a lot of secondary explosions, in some cases, when they were used for ammunition storage,” Rumsfeld said. “We have been targeting command-and-control and leadership activities where we can see – where we get information that leads us to believe that al Qaeda and Taliban leaders are gathered. And we have been targeting those facilities.”
All of this is designed to restrict the movement of Taliban leaders and al Qaeda terrorists. Rumsfeld hopes that the actions will prevent the escape of individuals.
“Well, one would hope they did not get let go into another country or even free in that country,” Rumsfeld said. “They ought to be impounded. I mean, they’re people who have done terrible things.”
Rumsfeld stressed that while victories by the Northern Alliance and reports of Taliban surrenders are heartening, the war is far from over.
“The war on terrorism is still in its early stages. Perseverance and will and patience and sacrifice is going to be required in the months ahead, and while the nature of what’s taking place is changing, it is going to be no less difficult,” Rumsfeld said. “We will not be able to fight an antiseptic war. The cause we’re engaged in – if you’re going to put people’s lives at risk, you better have a darn good reason. And we do. This terrorist problem is an enormously dangerous one for our country and for the world.
“Lives are at risks, and lives will be lost,” Rumsfeld added. “Any anyone who thinks that you can have an antiseptic war is wrong.”
However, Rumsfeld said Operation Enduring Freedom’s cause is clear. It will not be an easy task, he cautioned.
“Our goal, of course, is to stop terrorists from attacking the United States and our deployed forces and our friends and allies,” Rumsfeld said. “And there undoubtedly are sleepers out there who will continue to engage in terrorist activities, so even if we did feel that we had dealt with the al Qaeda network, there undoubtedly will be al Qaeda people still out there because they’re spread across the globe.”
On the Net: The Pentagon: http://www.defenselink.mil
