U.S. Military In Pakistan

Pakistan has allowed American military aircraft to land inside its borders and has granted the United States use of at least two air bases during airstrikes inside Afghanistan, Pakistani officials confirmed Thursday.

However, the issue is extremely controversial in this Muslim country of 145 million people, and the government issued a formal denial Thursday that "U.S. armed services personnel and aircraft" were in Pakistan.

Despite the official denial, Pakistani officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that Americans were at the Jacobabad air base, 300 miles northeast of Karachi.

At least 15 U.S. military aircraft, including C-130 transport planes, have landed at Jacobabad in the past two days, Pakistani officials and witnesses said. Officials said the movement of aircraft had also been seen at the other base in Pasni 180 miles west of Karachi. The officials emphasized the Americans were not ground forces.

The Pakistani government has said it would allow the United States to use its airspace and provide logistical support but would not permit combat troops to launch military operations against Afghanistan.

Islamic religious parties sympathetic to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers have denounced both the air attacks and Pakistan's support for the anti-terrorism campaign and have called for nationwide protests Friday, the Muslim day of prayer. Previous demonstrations have drawn only modest turnouts.

Three days ago, hundreds of Pakistani paramilitary troops also began arriving at Jacobabad, local residents said.

Security at Jacobabad, a city of about 200,000 people, has been increased in recent days.

As America marked the one-month anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. jets Thursday rained bombs on Afghanistan for the fifth straight day, Pentagon officials said.

Heavy explosions rocked the Kabul airport Thursday afternoon in the first daylight raids on the capital. Earlier in the day, civilians fled the southern Afghan city of Kandahar as raids there targeted a compound where followers of Osama bin Laden had lived.

Special forces "will have a significant role in all the areas they are trained to perform in," said Army Col. Bill Darley, a spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command.

That means small groups of American soldiers could be sent on missions that include training rebel forces to fight the Taliban militia, seeking to kidnap or kill bin Laden or other terrorist leaders, and encouraging Afghans to help the U.S. fforts.

The aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk took position Wednesday off the coast of Pakistan without its usual number of airplanes aboard, allowing it to be used as a floating base for special forces operations.

"I think you'll probably see helicopters inserting special forces personnel and extracting them," said Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war. "The scenario of an all-out ground invasion is just not in the cards... but you probably have to go in on the ground to make sure that the training camps and other terrorist networks are eliminated, and that means the risk of American lives."

If used, the special forces likely would use Black Hawk helicopters, which can carry up to 14 commandos and their gear and have equipment allowing them to fly low and fast at night or in bad weather.

President Bush on Tuesday refused to say whether U.S. ground troops would be sent into Afghanistan. U.S. officials have acknowledged that some special forces reconnaissance units were in Afghanistan before the airstrikes began.

Nearly all targets of immediate urgency, such as surface-to-air missile sites that threaten allied pilots, were struck Sunday - some were struck again Monday - and by Tuesday air mission planners were moving on to what Rumsfeld called "emerging targets." By that he meant any target of value that popped into view, whether it be an al-Qaida terrorist leader or a Taliban troop convoy.

It was this shift in approach from tightly scripted missions to a more improvised effort that explained why some Navy strike aircraft returned to their carrier in the Arabian Sea on Tuesday without having attacked their targets, Rumsfeld said. Some planes went looking for "targets of opportunity" but found none.

The CIA is actively aiding the northern alliance in its war against the Taliban, reports Martin. It is the largest CIA covert operation since the 1980s when it aided the so-called Afghan Freedom Fighters in their battle against the Soviet invasion.

At the same time, CIA agents are trying to recruit tribal leaders in southern Afghanistan to help track down bin Laden and to let American commandos set up forward operating bases from which to launch raids.

On the front lines in Northern Afghanistan, the anti-Taliban soldiers are bracing themselves, stockpiling weapons and military aid that is finally arriving from Russia.

But the northern alliance has a serious strategic problem in this mountainous terrain -- they cannot move forward as long the Taliban are dug into the high ground. The solution, they say, is American planes should finish off bombing the Taliban's infrastructure and start bombing their fighting positions.

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