About 1,200 Marines began moving into southern Afghanistan Sunday night, marking the introduction of conventional ground troops into the seven-week-old war, Defense Department officials said Sunday.
Streams of U.S. helicopters began flying into the big airport just outside Kandahar as other aircraft circled overhead. The Marines will establish a base in the area, probably at the Kandahar airport that once was a base for the al Qaeda terrorist network, and will begin operating indefinitely in the south, one official said. They eventually could have as many as 2,000 troops on the ground, officials said.
The Marine helicopters began landing at the airport after local anti-Taliban Pashtun fighters took over the airport and an adjacent town. The movement of the Marines from Navy ships in the Arabian Sea to bases in Pakistan, and then into the area around Kandahar, should be completed by Tuesday night, the officials said.
The 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit is drawn from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and is aboard the USS Peleliu and its support ships. It is commanded by Col. Thomas Waldhauser, who once headed a Marine company that operated unmanned aerial vehicles and later served as deputy director of the anti-terrorism office on the staff of the Joint Chiefs. During the Gulf War, he was on the staff of Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer, the Marine commander in that conflict.
The other part of the Marine force is the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeune, N.C., aboard the USS Bataan and other ships. It is commanded by Col. Andrew Frick, a career helicopter pilot.
The two Marine Expeditionary Units are being combined into a brigade under the command of Brig. Gen. James Mattis. A 32-year veteran of the Corps, Mattis commanded the 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines in the Persian Gulf War.
\He has a great reputation'field-oriented and operationally sound,"" said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper.
The Marine incursion into southern Afghanistan began as the United States reportedly suffered a casualty in northern Afghanistan after Taliban troops held prisoner by the opposition Northern Alliance attacked their captors in a fortress west of Mazar-e Sharif. Pentagon officials said that all U.S. military personnel were accounted for but that one CIA officer was wounded in the uprising, which was put down in part by U.S. air strikes. Hundreds of prisoners were reported killed in the battle.
The Marines are expected to stage a variety of missions aimed at helping to track down members of the al Qaeda network inside Afghanistan and stopping them from escaping into neighboring Pakistan. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly told his top commanders that he wants to ensure that al Qaeda members aren't permitted to slip away to establish new terrorist bases in other countries.
""It's all about putting pressure on the Taliban from a variety of directions with a variety of methods,"" a senior defense official said Sunday night. Adding new and different elements of U.S. military power also protects U.S. personnel by reducing the predictability of U.S. actions.
