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'Undefined Enemy' Shifts Combat Tactics
Tuesday, May 21, 2002
By George Edmonson
Atlanta Staff

"There are different ways to skin this cat. It's a function of what your larger war aims are and how quickly you think you've got to be out of this theater."

Washington -- AJ-C
U.S. forces in Afghanistan can expect to encounter more small groups of enemy fighters of the kind that led to a brief but deadly firefight over the weekend, a top Pentagon officer said Monday.

"They've changed their tactics," said Marine Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "They operate in small groups to avoid contact with our forces."

Newbold, speaking at a Pentagon press briefing, said the shift came after U.S. strikes against massed groups of enemy forces, particularly in Operation Anaconda earlier this year.

Dispersal is a routine tactic for a force being hurt by mass firepower, Stephen Biddle said. Biddle is a University of North Carolina political science professor on leave at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

"That simultaneously makes them harder for us to target, but also less lethal to us," said Biddle, who visited Afghanistan recently. "And that's why they're only dispersing now. . . . You disperse as necessary in order to survive, but no further than that."
(More: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution News Source)
2002 © The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Dan