Small US units lure Taliban into losing battles

Finally, O'Neal peers inside the doorway at an angle, and sees Schafer slumped against the wall. He reaches for an automatic weapon, an M-249, and steps a bit closer to peer inside. The room is shrouded in darkness. He tries to turn on his tactical light on his helmet, but it doesn't work. There are no Taliban fighters in sight, but they are there.

"I'm not thinking very clearly," O'Neal admits later. "I just want to try to pull Schafer out with one hard pull."

Finally, after three attempts and several injuries, O'Neal tosses smoke grenades into the room while three soldiers pull Schafer's body out. The men toss standard grenades into the room to kill the Taliban inside. But some survive and fire back.

The Americans have now taken two gunshot casualties, one of them fatal, and five casualties from heat. Velez has been injured by shrapnel from a grenade. And they are just halfway through checking the village.

At one point, there is a massive explosion in a nearby house, perhaps an attempt by Taliban fighters to destroy a weapons cache. A Taliban fighter attempts to jump from the exploding roof, landing in a tree. Velez shoots him.

Hormann says the ferocity of the battle still leaves him surprised. "Usually the Taliban just shoot and run."

O'Neal says it's possible that there was a meeting of relatively high-level Taliban commanders on that day, and the Taliban felt obliged to fight in defense, rather than run. In any case, in Siahchow, the Taliban were trapped by Special Forces; they didn't have any choice but to fight.

"In my opinion, the reason so many Taliban got together [to fight in large groups] this year is that they're trying to get a big victory under their belt," says O'Neal. He pauses. "Well, that's not really working out for them."

Sometime in March, the men of the 173rd Airborne Division will finish their year-long deployment in Afghanistan, and will return to their home base in Vicenza, Italy. Nobody knows yet who will replace them, or what methods those fighters will use.

Long-term, the Afghan National Army (ANA) will have to take over the defense of their country, but US military commanders at the ground level say that time is still a long way off. ANA fighters are enthusiastic learners, and they are picking up a great deal of real-life training under American advisers in real missions.

But the ANA still have a disconcerting habit of shooting themselves with their own weapons. "The problem is muzzle discipline," says 2nd Lieut. Ben Wisnioski, a commander of an ANA unit based in Qalat. In the week before the elections, Lieutenant Wisnioski lost three ANA soldiers to self-inflicted wounds.

Instead, most American commanders expect the southern command in Kandahar will be taken over by NATO. While NATO has generally conducted peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan thus far, heading the International Security and Assistance Force that guards Kabul and other cities in the north, American commanders say that the NATO force will have a strong counterinsurgency component.

"The British have more experience than everybody in counterinsurgency," says Maj. Douglas Vincent, spokesman for Forward Operating Base at Qalat, and a native of Boca Raton, Fla. "They have very good experience from Northern Ireland."

But will the British continue to use a similar strategy of small ground forces that has worked for the 173rd Airborne? Maybe they shouldn't, says Major Vincent. "It's good to keep changing things, keep them guessing."

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