The Pentagon moved yesterday to step up its support of the anti-Taliban rebels in northern Afghanistan, acknowledging for the first time that U.S. troops are on the ground to coordinate intensified airstrikes and signaling that additional military assets may be moved to Central Asia in the coming weeks.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said "something like 80 percent" of yesterday's airstrikes were aimed at frontline troops of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia. A senior defense official said the strikes focused on Taliban units barring the opposition Northern Alliance from taking Afghanistan's major northern city, Mazar-e Sharif, and its capital, Kabul.
Rumsfeld said the U.S. combat troops in northern Afghanistan are playing a liaison role with the Northern Alliance, designating targets for airstrikes and helping arrange logistical support. "We do have a very modest number of ground troops in the country," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "They're in the north. We've had others on the ground who have gone in and come out in the south."
A senior U.S. military officer, meanwhile, said it is likely that additional forces -- most likely strike aircraft -- will be moved in the coming weeks to Central Asia, where they could easily attack targets in northern Afghanistan. Another official said that the deployment of a variety of military assets to the region has been proposed but not yet approved by Rumsfeld.
The United States is already using bases in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Rumsfeld is scheduled to fly to Central Asia early next week, following a trip he made there earlier this month. Next week's visit comes on the heels of one made to Uzbekistan yesterday by Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld also is expected to visit Russia, India and Pakistan.
The shift of the Pentagon's attention to northern Afghanistan after several weeks of concentrating airstrikes on the south of the country could provide several military and political benefits to the United States and its allies. By helping the Northern Alliance advance, it would enable the United States to point to progress in the 24-day-old war as well as open up northern land corridors for humanitarian food relief for starving Afghans as winter approaches.
It also addresses a major concern of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that weeks of bombing the south are exacerbating tensions inside his country, where the war is widely unpopular. Many Pakistanis are far more sensitive to bombing of their ethnic cousins in the south than they are to military action in the north.
Finally, officials said, an emphasis on the north might buy time for the covert U.S. effort in southern Afghanistan under which the CIA and Pakistani officials are trying to woo leaders of the Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in the south, away from the Taliban militia.
Until yesterday there were few signs that the U.S. strategy was succeeding. But prominent officials said yesterday that they now think that splits may be emerging.
"We are getting accounts of changing sides, of local leaders abandoning support for the Taliban regime," British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon told reporters at a breakfast meeting here. He said he thinks some Pashtun leaders "are having second thoughts" about supporting the Taliban.
Musharraf hinted that he also saw the prospect of prominent Pashtun defections. "It's not wishful thinking," he told Reuters television.
Field reports indicate that some Taliban commanders are "pleading for more supplies, including weapons, and pleading for more reinforcements," said one senior U.S. official briefed on conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. "There are also defections among Taliban commanders, and some are are questioning" Taliban leader Mohammad Omar's "leadership and his stability."
The reports could not be confirmed independently.
Rumsfeld was more cautious on the subject. "I have not seen personally anything that I could validate that would suggest a major shift in one direction or another," he said.
One U.S. military officer said that the Northern Alliance, which has been battling the Taliban for control of Mazar-e Sharif, is "trying to organize themselves for something coordinated before Ramadan," the Muslim holy month that begins in mid-November. The effort, the officer said, is clearly being aided by U.S. airstrikes. "They attrit the Taliban lines every day."
A senior defense official said that the bulk of yesterday's airstrikes by about 70 aircraft were focused on the Mazar-e Sharif area. "The better availability of information helps immensely," the official said, referring to the presence of U.S. troops designating targets.
The official said that this emphasis on Mazar-e Sharif in particular and northern Afghanistan in general is the byproduct of the Pentagon's plan of operations, not a political decision.
"What you're seeing is a conventional side of a campaign -- you obviously take out the air defenses," the official said. "Then you take out the military assets, so that when you get to the point where you can turn to the forces in the field, you've clearly given them nowhere to go. That's what you're seeing when you hear people say we're on plan."
Mohammad Ashraf Nadeem, an opposition spokesman, told Reuters that some American troops already are operating a small base in northern Afghanistan. "They have their own base there and are equipped with guns and other means of defense and wear uniforms," he said.
By helping the opposition move in the north, the United States also might take the spotlight off Kabul, where the opposition is bogged down about 25 miles north of the capital. The United States and Britain would like to preserve that standoff by having the Northern Alliance advance against the Taliban elsewhere, and having the rebels stay out of the capital until arrangements are in place for some sort of Pashtun involvement in the future government of Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance is comprised primarily of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks.
Hoon declined to answer directly when asked whether he would like to see the rebels occupy Kabul. Rather, he said that, "We want to see the Northern Alliance advancing and taking territory from the Taliban regime."
Franks told reporters in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, that he flew to Uzbekistan from Pakistan yesterday by crossing directly through Afghan airspace. "We've said for awhile that we own the skies, and he wanted to make that point," a defense official said.
Franks suggested that the United States has different goals than the Afghan rebel groups. "We have discussed whether it would in fact support our campaign objectives to move toward a variety of places," the general said. "And we have taken a decision that says we will remain focused on our objectives, and we will retain the initiative rather than providing specific focus on a specific area." The United States has been clear that its two top priorities in the war are attacking the al Qaeda terrorist network in Afghanistan and its hard-core supporters in the Taliban.
Franks, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, also said the war is going according to plan. "We want to conduct this operation on our timeline," he said. "I think we are on that timeline."
Pentagon officials were generally more upbeat as well. "I think that it's certain that we will defeat the Taliban," said Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, deputy director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We will do it in consonance with the Northern Alliance and other opposition forces. So it is a matter of when more than it is a matter of if."
Struck reported from Tashkent. Staff writer Vernon Loeb contributed to this report. 
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