Rumsfeld visits troops, leaders in Afghanistan

December 17, 2001|By Vernon Loeb, The Washington Post.

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made an upbeat visit Sunday to newly liberated Afghanistan, meeting with two of the country's interim leaders and hundreds of U.S. troops guarding this heavily damaged former Soviet base.

His arrival aboard a giant C-17 cargo plane made Rumsfeld the first senior Bush administration official to set foot in Afghanistan since the war on terrorism began Oct. 7, and he relished every minute of his four-hour stay.

Rumsfeld's lengthy chat with Hamid Karzai, who will head a six-month interim government taking power Saturday, and Mohammad Fahim, the opposition commander turned defense minister, took place in a pockmarked aircraft hanger. Rumsfeld and Karzai marveled at the rapid collapse of the Taliban Islamic militia that ruled Afghanistan for five years and the Arab fighters it harbored.

Karzai credited the U.S. for helping to "liberate Afghanistan for a second time," referring to the earlier role played in arming the Afghan mujahedeen during their long war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

After a tour of the Bagram air base, its tarmac littered with wrecked MiG fighter jets from the Soviet war and its periphery still heavily mined, Rumsfeld held a town meeting with U.S. forces and told them they had made the nation proud.

"The president of the United States, the commander in chief, is determined to let the world know that our country cannot be attacked without consequences," Rumsfeld said. "And you are bringing the consequences."

The first question, asked by a soldier from the Army's 10th Mountain Division--"When are we going home?"--elicited a no-nonsense Rumsfeld reply.

"There is no way to know how long it's going to take to find [Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed] Omar and find Osama bin Laden and find the senior Al Qaeda leadership and see that they're punished," he said. "We're not leaving until we get the job done."