PETER SNOW:                  And I'm joined by Air Marshal 
Sir Tim Garden again. Now there's still a sense this weekend, after four 
weeks of this war, that the allies are holding back a bit, biding their 
time, waiting for more intelligence information and not giving way to pressure 
from public opinion or from their impatient allies on the ground. But they 
have stepped things up in two important areas. B52 bombers have been dropping 
bombs in support of the Northern Alliance by making attacks on the Taliban 
front-lines and areas up in North and North-East of the country, not intensively 
enough to satisfy their allies on the ground and not yet enough to make 
the Taliban withdraw or desert. More detail on those raids in a moment.

The other shift of emphasis is on the ground.  We don't know where it 
happened but one American helicopter crashed in Afghanistan, apparently 
the weather was bad, somewhere in the middle of the country during an operation 
by special forces.  They sent in another helicopter to rescue the crew 
and a strike aircraft to destroy the downed helicopter. Now the Taliban 
say they shot down two helicopters; the Americans deny it.  But whatever 
the truth is, we now have clear evidence of American forces exposed to 
risk on the ground in Afghanistan. And we know for sure that American Special 
Forces are somewhere up here in the North and North-East of the country 
accompanying the forces of the Northern Alliance in their fight with the 
Taliban - and the Pentagon says it would like to increase the number of 
these men three or four-fold over the next few weeks. The trouble is, even 
with the help they're getting so far, the Northern Alliance still haven't 
scored any major successes. 
   
Now, we've no way of knowing, but one other operation which special forces 
- perhaps even that crashed helicopter - may have been involved in, is 
taking place somewhere here in the middle of Afghanistan in Oruzgan province. 
 This is where another important anti-Taliban southerner, Hamid Karzai 
is said to be trying to organise resistance to the Taliban.  The Taliban 
say they've already captured some of his supporters and are pursuing him 
hard, but Karzai's brother in Pakistan says he's heard from Karzai that 
he's perfectly safe.   

Some heartening news for the allied coalition this week has been that 
Turkey will be sending ninety troops, Special Forces, to aid the Northern 
Alliance and the Czech Republic will be sending some three hundred troops, 
half of them experts in chemical warfare.   And the Pentagon has announced 
that it's going to deploy this curious unmanned aircraft, it's called the 
Global Hawk, over Afghanistan. It can detect very small objects and the 
weakest of radio signals over a very wide area. Now Air Marshal, what good 
can an aircraft like Global Hawk be with the winter coming on?

AIR MARSHAL SIR TIM GARDEN:    Well it's a very new aircraft with 
all the latest technology and still in the development phase. It can stay 
above the country for thirty-six hours at a time and as the winter comes 
on, the detection of infra-red contrast is so much better and what we will 
see is signs of where human habitation is in caves, under the snow, and 
things like that.

SNOW:                    So the winter won't defeat 
the intelligence operation?

GARDEN:                    No, the winter will actually 
make it easier in many ways, to see tracks when you do the photographs 
and to see where people are living.

SNOW:                    Now in this morning's press, 
there's a huge amount of speculation that we could be about to see a huge 
invasion, or attack at least, on Mazar-e-Sharif from the north here, on 
perhaps the northern parts of Afghanistan, a huge allied component perhaps, 
but using the Northern Alliance. Do you think that's credible and possible?

GARDEN:                    No I think what we're seeing 
is that Mazar-e- Sharif is the target for now, but there aren't huge allied 
forces there and if you remember in the Gulf War, it took about five months 
to assemble a large allied force and I think the time-scales are not going 
to be that different these days.

SNOW:                    What about the Northern Alliance. 
Could they take Mazar-e-Sharif?

GARDEN:                    If they have sufficient 
help from the US Air Forces, yes.

SNOW:                    Okay. Well the Americans 
say they are now into Phase Three of their air campaign in Afghanistan. 
First, they hit the Taliban's air defences, that was Phase One, the radars 
and so on, then they went for air-strips and command posts all over country. 
In Phase Three, they say that eighty per cent of their effort is directed 
to bombing the Taliban's front-line troops up here, where they're facing 
the Northern Alliance. 

Early in this last week, up here in Tajikistan, General Tommy Franks, 
who's the American Commander in the area, met the Northern Alliance's Commander, 
General Mohamed Fahim and he agreed to give the Northern Alliance much 
more overt support. Now here's a closer look at the battleground up in 
the north, where the Northern Alliance say they urgently need help if they're 
to take Mazar-e-Sharif and the capital, Kabul. Two other important towns, 
Kondoz and Taloqan - hold key positions on the major roads in the north 
of the country. And the Northern Alliance, very roughly, control the area 
within this dotted line, a large circle south of Mazar-e-Sharif, a bit 
of country up here, and the area around Taloqan and north east of Kabul, 
like that, we can put the Northern Alliance tanks and soldiers, we've coloured 
them yellow here on our map and there they are, that's their position there 
and they're putting particular pressure on Taloqan as well as threatening 
Mazar and Kabul. 

The Americans now have Special Forces accompanying the Northern Alliance, 
of course the Americans would like to increase the number of those forces, 
they are advising them, sending back targeting information to the American 
Air Force and they're dropping ammunition and other weapons supplies by 
parachute and helicopter to the Northern Alliance already. They say they'd 
like to do more on the ground, but in one place where they tried to reinforce 
the Northern Alliance, the Pentagon tell us they ran into ground fire that 
was too heavy.
 
This last week, we've seen them send the B52s to bomb Taliban positions 
in three areas in particular. First, here at Dara-i-Suf, south of Mazar-e- 
Sharif. Now each B52 drops a devastating load of bombs the Americans call 
them long sticks of bombs, it's more generally described as carpet-bombing 
and it may have had some effect in this area here. The Northern Alliance 
claim that they've gained ground in the last day or two, although thought 
they suffered some earlier reverses, but this can't be verified independently. 
 

Now up here around Taloqan, also the B52s carpet bombing Taliban positions 
in the hills around the city of Taloqan, denying the Northern Alliance 
access to Taloqan.  

The airfield of Bagram also down there, just north of Kabul, there's also 
B52 operations there and again, it's the Americans bombing the Taliban 
positions around the airfield of Bagram. Bagram being on the frontline 
between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban protecting Kabul.  But this 
has not resulted yet in the Northern Alliance gaining any ground here and 
claims that they've won hundreds of deserters from the Taliban here and 
elsewhere have not been verified by anybody else.  

So are the Americans doing enough to help the people they say they're 
committed to helping? Well the air effort is less intense than it was in 
the Gulf War ten years ago. That's partly accounted for by the fact of 
course that the carrier- based strike aircraft have to travel much further 
here than they had to in Iraq. Then there were thousands of sorties a day, 
now there are less than a hundred. And in the Gulf War, B52s were staging 
a hundred raids or more, with five-hundred, six-hundred raids a day. Now 
they're flying about ten raids a day. Now Air Marshal, couldn't these air 
operations be stepped up much more heavily.

GARDEN:                    Well part of it is the 
number of targets you've got and it's very difficult from the Gulf War 
where you had formal armoured formations to attack. These attacks which 
are not carpet bombing, they are just sticks of bombs coming from B52s, 
really are devastating to those that are underneath. They are not as precise 
as precision weapons, but the psychological effect is enormous and the 
reports out of the Gulf War at the end of it, from Iraqi prisoners of war, 
show that continual bombardment by B52s, really did sap their will to fight 
and I think, over a period of time, the loss of sleep, the feeling of danger, 
really does undermine the morale, it also boosts of course the morale of 
the Northern Alliance.

SNOW:                    So give us a quick idea what 
we could expect in the next few weeks. You don't think we'd expect a huge 
land invasion, but you think we can expect much more activity by the Northern 
Alliance?

GARDEN:                    Yes, I mean, I think those 
zones that you were showing earlier can be joined up so that the north 
becomes an area that the Northern Alliance controls, if Bagram airfield 
can be secured in a way that it's not overlooked by the Taliban, that really 
is the north of the country ready to start building through the winter 
in order to look at Kabul, perhaps in the spring.

SNOW:                    Air Marshal Sir Tim Garden, 
thank you very much. Back to you John.