"In Hot Pursuit"

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Once inside Afghanistan, the special-ops forces face a variety of groups loyal to the Taliban, everything from armed farmers to well-organized troops. Some larger units have artillery, armored vehicles and other support elements. Hundreds of former army officers and pilots, mostly members of the dominant Pashtun ethnic group, operate the Taliban's air force--a collection of fewer than 30 planes that a Pentagon official says the U.S. could wipe out in a single strike. The country's rudimentary air-defense systems--a motley collection of antiaircraft guns, shoulder-fired Russian SA-7 missiles and leftover U.S. Stingers from the CIA's campaign to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s--are far less a threat than what U.S. pilots now face every day over Iraq.

The Taliban's key vehicle is the pickup truck. Impressed with the cross-country performance of pickups during the war with the Soviets, the militia chose the pickup as its main combat vehicle. Taliban militiamen--each truck carries about 10--fire from the back while on the move. "The result has been the creation of a unique force of pickup-mounted cavalry," wrote Ali Ahmad Jalali, a former colonel in the Afghan army, in the spring issue of Parameters, the U.S. Army's senior professional journal. "This formation has been extremely effective in exploiting tactical success." And though the Taliban army still looks amateurish in many ways--fighters are often rushed to the front at the last minute, leaving gaping holes in the rear--they are effective enough that a Pentagon survey in recent weeks suggests that it would take more than 100,000 allied soldiers to occupy and control the country.

That makes cleanly getting bin Laden and his network all the more appealing. The key, says the Pentagon, is keeping fresh troops in a position from which they can quickly strike at bin Laden anywhere in the country. Though U.S. intelligence has struggled to track him, officials hope they will get a lucky break--or better information from partners such as Pakistan or Russia. Even the dry missions, however, are useful. If they don't get bin Laden on a particular sortie, the commandos have orders to collect as much intelligence material from his al-Qaeda network as possible, including paper documents and computers. The data are then scoured both in the field and in Washington for clues to bin Laden's whereabouts. "Going after them is relatively the easiest piece of it," says a senior Pentagon official. "There is nothing more important in this war than information, by whatever means we can collect it."

That crucial intelligence will also make it easier, if and when the time comes, for the U.S. to go after the rest of al-Qaeda. Pentagon officials say they are ready to strike if the right intelligence comes along. So far, says an Air Force general, "this isn't like the previous campaigns, where we had a big book of options on what to hit. We had a bunch of bin Laden targets but not much more [in Afghanistan]." Broadening the set of targets to include Taliban encampments--beyond the obvious ministries and airfields--is what is keeping planners at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., busy right now. Still, there is only so much they can do. "There just aren't a lot of targets for us there," the Air Force officer says. "If they want a lot of targets, they'd better pick another country."

More than ever, that will make this a special-forces war. The stealth with which members of those units operate reduces the political risks that could fracture the U.S. coalition. But that assumes they succeed. Their record has been mixed. And in operations like Desert One, the calamitous U.S. rescue mission to Iran in 1980, they have done far more damage to U.S. prestige than to the enemy.

Should the U.S. be targeting bin Laden so aggressively? Taking out your enemies is a time-honored practice, notably used by Israel in recent times. A key element in Israel's antiterrorist strategy for years has been to eliminate them. Israelis not only killed Palestinians to avenge attacks like the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre but went after operational brains as well. In 1973 an Israeli commando team, which included then-future Prime Minister Ehud Barak--disguised as a woman--wiped out several top Palestine Liberation Organization leaders in a raid in Beirut. The Israelis are still at it. A missile attack last month killed Abu Ali Mustafa, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as he sat at his desk in Ramallah.