After Battle, Injured Foes Are Treated With Allies

By John F. Burns | New York Times | March 10, 2002

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, March 9 – Perhaps the most striking thing about the field hospital run by the United States Army at this old Soviet airfield is that wounded Americans lie side by side with Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters.

These are all men injured in the biggest land battle of the five-month war in Afghanistan, combat that started eight days ago and has so far seen about 90 American and other allied casualties admitted here. There are "not many" Taliban and Qaeda injured, according to Lt. Col. Ronald Smith, the 40-year-old surgeon in overall command of the American hospital and two similar surgical units run by the British and Spanish Armies.

After the controversy stirred by arrangements made for captured Taliban and Qaeda fighters at the prison set up at the United States military base at Guant·namo Bay, the idea of American and Qaeda fighters lying in the same wards after battling each other furiously in the mountains 100 miles southeast of here seemed, to an outsider at least, the last thing one might expect.

To Colonel Smith, who revealed the treatment of wounded Taliban and Qaeda fighters only when asked by reporters, the arrangement has been unexceptional. The limited space available in the field units and the ethics of combat surgery as practiced by American forces in previous wars simply require it, he said.

"Once they're no longer a threat, we have a responsibility to keep them alive," Colonel Smith said. These patients, he noted, were subject to "special security," meaning round-the-clock guards.

But hasn't having them alongside American and other allied wounded been difficult for the American doctors and nurses to accept? "Of course it has," the colonel replied. "They have attacked our nation, and they've attacked this nation, Afghanistan, and that's created very hard feelings. So it's a very hard thing. But we value life, that's what our nation values, so we treat all our patients just the same."

Despite the ferocity of the combat of the past week, none of the casualties admitted here so far – either American, allied or Afghan – has died, Colonel Smith said. "It's been very much a miracle," he said.

For the third day running today, the intensity of the battle appeared lowered by bad weather, with low cloud and intermittent periods of driving rain. In the United States, military officials said the weather was not slowing operations in any significant way, and that Al Qaeda resistance had lessened markedly.

But there was certainly less bombing, all of which has been conducted from high altitudes. Predator drones, which provide real-time intelligence by circling at low speed, and low altitude, provide the best images in clear weather, allowing American commanders to pick out even individual enemy fighters.

At the Bagram base, 30 miles north of Kabul, which has served as headquarters for the operation, American commanders seemed frustrated, but still confident of an early conclusion to the battle.

Maj. Bryan Hilferty, spokesman for the operation, said the coalition forces had continued "search and attack" missions in the Shah-i-Kot valley throughout Friday and into Saturday, concentrating on clearing out caves and bunkers on the steep slopes of the 11,500-foot mountains.

American troops, along with about 200 combat soldiers from other western nations, have carried most of the fighting while a force of about 1,000 Afghan soldiers have mainly taken on support duties such as blocking trails leading to the battlefield.

American officers returning from the battlefield struggle for the appropriate word when describing their foes, reluctant to convey anything resembling admiration.

But they are clearly amazed that men who lack the technological advantages enjoyed by the Americans, who are surrounded and outnumbered now by perhaps 5 or even 10 to 1, have shown no willingness to fly the white flag.

"I don't know what it is that drives them, a desire to protect some top leader or a deep yearning to become martyrs, but whatever it is, it's something that a rational mind finds hard to fathom," one officer said.

Colonel Smith, the command surgeon, seemed to have noticed something similar.

"They are very dedicated to their cause, to be fighting with one limb, and with all the other injuries they have suffered over the years," he said, adding that his patients have not been hostile.

"I think they're scared," he said. "You have an environment that is unfamiliar to them. They haven't struck out at the medical care providers, and they haven't cursed or sworn."

Copyright 2002 New York Times Company