Allies to push Taliban into enclave

More US special forces teams have been flown into Afghanistan to help a major push by anti-Taliban forces as winter begins to set in.

Overnight helicopter gunships were heard firing missiles into Kabul - leading to speculation that the US and local allies have placed special force patrols in and around the capital to guide air attacks.

The US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, during a visit to Pakistan, has said the Taliban has ceased to function as a government in Afghanistan - though they were still fighting hard in several enclaves across the country. He said that the al Qaeda terrorist network based in Afghanistan still posed a global threat.

The extra undercover teams have been flown into Afghanistan by helicopter under cover of darkness. They will be acting as forward aircraft controllers for fighter bombers from the naval task group of three carriers plus the Royal Navy's HMS Illustrious now in the Arabian Sea.

"The more teams we get on the ground, the more effectively we will bring air power to bear on the Taliban's lines," General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told American television at the weekend. "Just last night, the night before, we put in a couple more teams."

There are now about 100 US forward aircraft controllers and liaison officers on the ground in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon sources.

Snow has already arrived on the higher slopes, heralding winter. But this seems unlikely to deter the next phase of the campaign in Afghanistan, which has been unveiled to interested parties among the anti-terrorist alliance during Mr Rumsfeld's tour to Russia, to Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India.

Northern Alliance forces under close supervision by US advisers and communications experts are now expected to make a concerted push for the key provincial capital of Mazar-i-Sharif in the next two to three weeks. An enclave will then been carved out reaching up to the border with Uzbekistan. The Taliban will be forced into southern enclaves, where British and French special forces team will carry out intelligence gathering operations throughout the winter, leading to a possible major ground offensive by air assault forces in the spring.

Mr Rumsfeld has been so uncharacteristically forthcoming about the northern enclave plan that some experienced journalists accompanying his tour suspect it could be a deception, and the main effort of winter air and commando raids will be aimed at Kabul. Throughout the crisis the Pentagon has become a byword for public and private reticence to journalists.

At last night's impromptu meeting in Downing Street, where Tony Blair played host to eight European leaders, little was said about the major commitment of ground forces in the immediate future - though all other aspects of the campaign against terrorism were discussed.

No 10 today claimed the mini-summit had been "very useful" in reinforcing the international coalition against terrorism, though it provoked unease in some European capitals that Mr Blair was short-circuiting the normal European Union timetable of meetings. Originally only France and Germany had been due to attend but in the event seven countries were represented including Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands. A Downing Street spokesman said there had been no "big new initiative" arising from the meeting, but the leaders had demonstrated "absolute solidarity" over the military campaign in Afghanistan.

Mazar-i-Sharif will become a major air and logistics base for the US and its allies. It will serve the dual purpose of being a military base and the centre for a major food aid distribution operation in the coming winter months. Turkey is offering thousands of troops and personnel to help man the new airbase and enclave through the winter.

The aid effort will require as many aircraft as the military attacks - and probably more. The condition of many in the larger cities, particularly Kabul, Kandahar, Herat and Jalalabad, is worsening. Kabul has swelled to a population of more than two and a half million due to the continuing disruption of war and civil war over the past 20 years. At the end of last week the main electricity power plant serving Kandahar was knocked out.

Though the achievements of the main local allies, the Northern Alliance, have been almost spectacularly inconspicuous over the past weeks since the American air campaign began, Mr Rumsfeld has been insisting the war is being won. The Americans say they have managed to carve out a temporary airstrip in northern Afghanistan. But at the weekend the Northern Alliance appeared to have made a real gain in the push on Mazar by taking the town of Aq-Kupruk, only to lose it again to a fierce Taliban counter-attack within hours.

During his stopover in Uzbekistan Mr Rumsfeld said that he believed progress is being made in the campaign against terrorism. "The effort to deal with the problem of terrorist networks is proceeding. It is, we believe, proceeding at a pace that is showing measurable progress."