Troops in Afghanistan preparing spring offensive in pursuit of insurgents

(Day 4 of a four-day Stars and Stripes series, "Afghanistan: Silent Warriors." Click here for the series index page, with links to the other stories.)

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Whether the U.S. military’s upcoming spring offensive cleanses Afghanistan’s mountains of Taliban or brings more thunder than lightning may depend on geography.

Thousands of troops and a significant number of aircraft are scheduled to arrive in Afghanistan for the start of the offensive, being called Operation Mountain Storm, according to military officials who asked not to be identified by name.

The offensive is intended to crush anti-coalition forces along Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.

“We are conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think Al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are,” Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty, coalition spokesman in Kabul, stated in an e-mail response, while declining to discuss specifics.

Coalition forces will squeeze Taliban and al-Qaida on the Afghan side of the border, in coordination with Pakistan forces across the border, Hilferty said. U.S. forces will not be involved on the Pakistani side of the border, he said.

In parts of southern Afghanistan, the spring offensive will be more akin to a routine operation and not on the scale of Operation Anaconda in 2002, said Lt. Col. Joe DiChairo, battalion commander for the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment.

Operation Mountain Storm “will not bring a whole lot of changes” beyond where the operations will be, DiChairo said.

Without discussing specific details, DiChairo said this offensive will involve “every military organization inside Afghanistan.” Currently, there are about 11,500 American troops and 2,000 coalition soldiers in Afghanistan.

“They’ll be working together more than ever before,” DiChairo said.

With those numbers, Mountain Storm could be larger than Operation Anaconda, which was the largest operation following the initial invasion in October 2001. That two-week offensive began March 2, 2002, and involved about 2,000 troops, including 1,000 Americans.

At the time, Gen. Tommy Franks, then U.S. Central Command chief, declared the operation a success, but several Afghan commanders said many Taliban and al-Qaida escaped into Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said after the campaign that the military’s key objective was to keep al-Qaida and Taliban fighters from regrouping, either in Afghanistan or in neighboring countries.

“We need to make sure that the well-trained terrorists who left Afghanistan do not set up sanctuaries in other nations,” Rumsfeld said.

That’s something the U.S. military has been able to accomplish, officials said.

Lt. Gen. John Vines, former commanding general of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, told reporters in December that anti-coalition forces have been attempting to regroup for the past nine months.

“Every time, we’ve disrupted them, we’ve interdicted them, we’ve denied them sanctuary, and we’ve killed them,” Vines told reporters.

Mountain Storm would continue that interdiction, reaching into Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries in the region, according to recent military and media reports. Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is believed to be in the tribal areas along the Afghan/Pakistan border.

But coalition forces don’t expect the same resistance they met during Anaconda, Hilferty said.

“I do not think another Anaconda is in the works because the enemy will probably not group in large numbers again,” he said. “We wish they would, but when they do, coalition soldiers engage and destroy them.”