October 19, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 1, 1422

JABAL SARAJ (Afghanistan): A US gunship pounded Taliban headquarters in Kandahar on Wednesday, signalling that the offensive against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leadership had entered a new phase.. A defence official confirmed that the attack was led by an AC-130, a lumbering aeroplane typically deployed to support ground forces headed for small-unit operations.

When US commandos drop from their helicopters in search of Osama and associates, they will have lessons of recent history to guide them. The US record on special operations and manhunts has been far from perfect, from a disastrous attempt to rescue US hostages in Iran in 1980, to the successful capture of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega in 1989, to a failed mission to capture the Somalian warlord Mohammad Farah Aidid in 1993.

Delta Force, the US Army’s most elite counter-terrorism unit, which to this day does not officially exist, will almost certainly be one of Washington’s primary tools as it goes after Osama.

While the task of finding an opponent as sophisticated as Osama may be daunting, analysts say that this time, US operatives here have several advantages over conditions in Somalia that improve chances of success.

“The intelligence environment is better (in Afghanistan), because of the nature of Osama’s operation - he is more observable to our high-tech systems,” says a former US Special Forces officer who was involved in the manhunts in Panama and Somalia.

“Aidid could shift houses literally next door, and we wouldn’t see or hear him” in the urban warrens of, Mogadishu, the officer recalls. “But Osama’s moves are bigger and longer-legged, out in the bush, and that makes him vulnerable to our seeing and listening systems.”

The challenge in catching Osama will be to flush him out into the open. American air strikes against the regime of the Taliban have been under way for the past 10 days. The same kind of pressure was applied in Panama by a land invasion - though the result could have gone either way.

“If Noriega had left his girlfriend’s house and gone next door to the basement, we probably would have missed him,” says the former officer. “But he went in a convoy in an urban area to the Papal Nuncio. It was a big move.”

Provoking such a big move from Osama may be key to US plans. Penetrating Osama’s operation with human spies or even finding turncoats may be impossible for US intelligence, as it proved to be in Somalia.

But if Osama stays put, that may provide an opportunity for spy-versus-spy. “The longer he stays in one place, the more people know it - the people who feed him, the people who get fuel for his generators,” says the officer.

Just as President Bush has declared he wants Osama “dead or alive,” the US also evoked a Wild West theme in the Somalian manhunt, printing and distributing “Wanted” posters and offering a $25,000 for Aidid’s capture.

When the US and UN became mired in nation-building, threatening the power of Somalia’s strongest warlord, that mission soon devolved into a manhunt for General Aidid. Gunmen from his clan were responsible for killing 22 Pakistani peacekeeping troops in June 1993.

The US military at the time rated the chances of getting Aidid as just 1 in 4. Senior intelligence officers estimated that only 30 to 40 per cent of their leads were right, meaning that two-thirds of their capture attempts were likely to fail.

The hazards of using human intelligence - which may or may not play a major role in Afghanistan - were on full display in Somalia. Paid Somali agents often gave false information. Spies were found with radio transmitters, and killed by Aidid operatives.

In Afghanistan, Hussain Ali Salad, a Somali witness to the manhunt in the country, says, “Americans are again seen as the aggressors,” so it is unlikely that the Taliban will betray Osama’s location. There is a key difference: the fact that Osama is a Saudi-born Arab, and not Afghan. As a “guest,” he enjoys certain privileges..

The US will have another advantage, too, which it did not have in Somalia: the element of surprise. In Afghanistan, Delta Force is likely to be operating out of remote airports in Uzbekistan, or from US aircraft carriers.

“Everything we did (in Somalia) was being watched by the enemy, who had people inside the airport and outside, watching,” says the former Special Forces officer. It was an airport - and a mission - that Delta Force would rather forget. In Afghanistan, he says, “we have a lot of advantages that we didn’t have in Somalia.” —Dawn/LATS Service (c) Christian Science Monitor.