The Washington Post

WASHINGTON The Pentagon moved yesterday to step up its support of the anti-Taliban rebels in northern Afghanistan, acknowledging for the first time U.S. troops are on the ground to coordinate intensified air strikes and signalling that additional military assets may be moved to Central Asia in the coming weeks.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said "something like 80 percent" of yesterday"s air strikes were aimed at front line troops of Afghanistan"s ruling Taliban militia. A senior defense official said the strikes focused on Taliban units barring the opposition Northern Alliance from taking Afghanistan"s major northern city, Mazar-e- Sharif, and its capital, Kabul.

Rumsfeld said the U.S. combat troops in northern Afghanistan are playing a liaison role with the Northern Alliance, designating targets for air strikes and helping arrange logistical support. "We do have a very modest number of ground troops in the country," Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon. "They"re in the north. We"ve had others on the ground who have gone in and come out in the south."

A senior U.S. military officer, meanwhile, said it is likely that additional forces most likely strike aircraft will be moved in the coming weeks to Central Asia, where they could easily strike targets in northern Afghanistan. Another official said that the deployment of a variety of military assets to the region has been proposed but not yet approved by Rumsfeld.

The United States is already using bases in the Central Asian republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.

Rumsfeld is scheduled to make a trip to Central Asia early next week, following one he made there earlier this month. That visit comes on the heels of one made to Uzbekistan yesterday by Army Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld also is expected to visit Russia, India and Pakistan.

The shift of the Pentagon"s attention to northern Afghanistan after several weeks of concentrating air strikes on the south of the country could provide several military and political benefits to the United States and its allies. By helping the Northern Alliance advance, it would enable the United States to point to progress in the 24-day-old war as well as open up northern land corridors for humanitarian food relief for starving Afghans as winter approaches.

It also addresses a major concern of Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that weeks of bombing the south are exacerbating tensions inside his country, where the war is widely unpopular. Many Pakistanis are far more sensitive to bombing of their ethnic cousins in the south than they are to military action in the north.

Finally, officials said, an emphasis on the north might buy time for the covert U.S. effort in southern Afghanistan under which the CIA and Pakistani officials are trying to woo leaders of the ethnic Pashtuns, the dominant ethnic group in the south, away from the ruling Taliban militia.

Until yesterday there were few signs that the U.S. strategy was succeeding. But prominent officials said yesterday that they now think that splits may be emerging. British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon said he thinks some Pashtun leaders "are having second thoughts" about supporting the Taliban.