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US is just playing around, says Northern Alliance
Thursday, October 18, 2001
By Marcus Warren / Telegraph Group, Ltd

Northern Alliance soldiers march through a cemetary en route to positions on the front line.
Photo Credit: Telegraph Group, Ltd.

The strikes made good a threat earlier this week by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, that the front line would not "be a very safe place to be."

BAGRAM, northern Afghanistan -- Telegraph Group, Ltd
The first American strikes against front-line targets north of Kabul left anti-Taliban commanders distinctly unimpressed yesterday. Some military chiefs even complained that their enemy's morale was higher now than before the air campaign began.

The negligible scale of the allied air raids on the military outside the Afghanistan capital had convinced the Taliban that America was "just playing around", one senior commander of the Northern Alliance forces said, citing reports from spies and "connections" in Kabul.

An unidentified plane was seen banking away over the mountains soon after two explosions a few miles south of the front line yesterday afternoon in what appeared to be the first daylight raid in the area.

Three bombs were dropped on Taliban positions six miles from Bagram, Afghanistan's largest air base, from early evening on Tuesday until dawn yesterday, the general in charge of the ruined airport confirmed.
(More: Telegraph.co.UK News Source)
2001 © Telegraph Group, Ltd.

Calls to mind Mussolini’s idea the hide troop movements by growing tall, bushy pines along the major roadways of northern Italy (many of those tall pines are still there today). The Allies solution? Bomb all tree-lines.

Dan