TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/010190/01019003.001

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 12.4 KB | 238 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 24

Sowing Dragon's Teeth


How Operation Just Cause "decapitated" Panama's Defense Forces,
then bogged down in scattered, and surprisingly tough, street
fighting

By Ed Magnuson/Reported by Wilson Ring and Dick Thompson/Panama
City and Bruce van Voorst/Washington


    Operation Just Cause was less than eight hours old, but
General Colin Powell was all but declaring victory. As Defense
Secretary Dick Cheney looked on approvingly, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff boasted that a 24,000-man U.S. force had
"decapitated" Manuel Antonio Noriega's army and seized control
of strategic facilities along the Panama Canal. Though the
crafty dictator was still on the loose, Powell said that it was
only a matter of time before U.S. soldiers tracked him down. The
only bad news in Powell's rosy report was the uncertain fate of
a dozen American hostages, seized by fleeing Panamanian
irregulars as they cut and ran from approaching American troops.

    On the battleground in Panama, however, a far less
optimistic drama was unfolding. Confounding Pentagon hopes that
Noriega's Panama Defense Forces would quickly crumble under a
devastating U.S. onslaught, the fugitive dictator's men were
preparing a determined counterattack. Instead of the quick and
decisive knockout U.S. commanders had sought, the invasion was
in danger of degenerating into a nasty street fight in densely
populated Panama City. House-to-house fighting in a crowded
urban area was something military planners were leery of because
of the threat to civilians.

    In recent months the Pentagon had quietly bolstered
American forces in Panama in preparation for a possible strike,
adding 4,500 combat troops, as well as tanks and attack
helicopters, to the 8,500 soldiers already deployed at U.S.
bases. The force was so strong that Pentagon planners had
briefly considered dispatching a column of U.S. troops to nab
Noriega during an ill-fated uprising by P.D.F. officers last
October. That daring plan was quickly -- and, as it turned out,
wisely -- discarded as too risky and uncertain.

    Just how risky became clear as Operation Just Cause got
under way. Many of Noriega's 4,000 best troops, including units
that had raced to his rescue during the failed coup, were posted
far outside Panama City. Another, less predictable menace was
posed by the brutal Dignity Battalions: 8,000 fanatical
pro-Noriega irregulars who had savagely attacked opposition
leaders in the aftermath of last May's aborted election.
Confronted by superior American forces, many P.D.F. soldiers
slipped away, only to reappear later and launch counterattacks
in Panama City.

    When George Bush ordered military action against the
increasingly arrogant dictator, the Pentagon put the finishing
touches on the option it preferred and had been secretly
preparing to implement: a massive simultaneous assault on all
P.D.F. strongholds by a combination of forces already in Panama
and a huge airlift of reinforcements from bases in the U.S.

    The plan called for overwhelming American forces to
intimidate and neutralize the P.D.F. while special units secured
vital dams and the electrical facilities powering the Panama
Canal. Once organized resistance had been shattered, military
police and other units trained in MOUT -- military operations
in urban terrain -- would undertake the house-to-house battle
against the Dignity Battalions. At Southern Command Headquarters
in Panama City, the arrival of General Maxwell Thurman last Oct.
1 brought a marked change in mood. Unlike his predecessor,
General Frederick Woerner, Thurman saw Noriega as primarily a
military rather than a political problem. According to Pentagon
sources, Thurman had been bristling for a fight since American
troops stood helplessly by while the October coup was crushed.

    As Wednesday's H hour approached, huge military transports
were landing at ten-minute intervals at Howard Air Force Base,
doubtless alerting Noriega that a U.S. strike might soon be
under way. Pentagon spokesmen dismissed the airlift as a routine
exercise. But total surprise had never loomed large in Pentagon
planning, which depended on vastly superior manpower, firepower
and speedy execution.

    The initial phases of Operation Just Cause went off as
planned. Shortly before midnight Tuesday, guests at Panama
City's ritzy Marriott Caesar Park Hotel were awakened by
sporadic shooting. A team of Navy SEALs (sea, air and land
capability) rushed the nearby private Paitilla Airport, where
Noriega kept a potential getaway Learjet. In a brief but vicious
firefight the SEALs overwhelmed guards, secured the landing
strip and destroyed the aircraft. But four SEALs were killed,
perhaps the earliest casualties of the conflict. Other SEALS
died while disabling boats Noriega could have used to make an
escape by sea.

    At around 12:15 a.m. Wednesday, residents of century-old
wooden houses ringing Noriega's sprawling P.D.F. headquarters,
called the Comandancia, were startled by the roar of circling
U.S. AC-130 combat Talon gunships and attack choppers, then the
rumble of tanks in the streets. The tanks fired barrage after
barrage at Noriega's official lair, and the sky was lit by
antiaircraft tracers. The streets soon began to fill as
terrified residents ran out of their flaming houses. An unknown
number died in their homes; many were injured. Meanwhile, U.S.
infantry units at Fort Amador opened fire with howitzers against
P.D.F. barracks situated conveniently nearby at the facility
shared by troops of both nations.

    Over the next 24 hours, the American force nearly doubled
as 9,500 troops, divided into five task forces, parachuted out
of the Panama skies or scrambled from large transport aircraft:

    TASK FORCE ATLANTIC. Made up of 82nd Airborne Division
paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C., and Seventh Infantry troops
from Fort Ord, Calif., backed by special units, it raced to
secure vital facilities at the Caribbean end of the canal, near
Colon. It took over Madden Dam, which stores water used to raise
and lower ships in the canal's locks, and seized control of the
electrical distribution center at Cerro Tigre. The task force
encountered stiff resistance from a P.D.F. naval infantry unit
on the northern coast. This force also freed 48 P.D.F. prisoners
at Gamboa prison.

    TASK FORCE SEMPER FIDELIS. Essentially a blocking force
deployed on Panama City's western border, its Marine rifle
company and light armored infantry company occupied the Bridge
of the Americas, which spans the canal, to prevent a P.D.F.
counterattack on the crucial Howard Air Force Base.

    TASK FORCE RED. Assigned targets on both sides of the
capital, its rangers had the night's most difficult chores. As
Pathfinder planes dropped flares to illuminate the drop areas,
the Rangers jumped from planes that flew as low as 500 ft., well
within the range of small-arms fire. The Rangers on the west
landed near Rio Hato, assaulted the barracks of the 6th and 7th
P.D.F. companies and took 250 prisoners. The bulk of P.D.F.
soldiers had slipped away. To the east, other commandos dropped
in large numbers on Torrijos International Airport.

    TASK FORCE PACIFIC. Once Task Force Red had secured the
airport, two waves of 82nd Airborne paratroopers jumped from 20
C-141 transports. They fanned out to assist Rangers and Special
Forces units that had blocked the Pacora River bridge to
prevent Battalion 2000 from reaching Panama City and to turn
back any attack from P.D.F. infantry and cavalry units based at
Fort Cimarron. When the Americans reached the fort, the crack
battalion was no longer there.

    TASK FORCE BAYONET. This mechanized battalion and light
tank force attacked the P.D.F. headquarters with a vengeance,
igniting a huge fire that gutted the main Comandancia building.
When the bombardment was over, its troops searched the building
room by room -- and found no one. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, Powell
felt confident enough to proclaim that "for the most part,
organized resistance has ended."

    U.S. forces then focused on the plight of hostages who had
been seized by Noriega's men. At the Marriott a foreign
journalist was approached at about 12:25 a.m. Wednesday by three
gunmen in ski masks and civilian clothes. They ordered her to
join eleven other guests, including seven Americans being held
hostage in the hotel by thugs toting AK-47s. They were marched
into a van, driven to a house and held in a kitchen for three
hours. "You're bombing our children; you're bombing our people,"
one told the Americans. "If we were in another country, we would
kill you." The group was placed in two cars and released near
the hotel with a final word from their captors: "We will
continue the fight, the struggle."

    Not until Wednesday night did American troops finally fight
their way through Dignity Battalions to protect 64 frightened
guests and workers at the hotel. The next day one U.S. unit at
the hotel sighted a personnel carrier approaching and opened
fire. The shots were returned. In the hotel parking lot a
Spanish photographer, Juan Antonio Rodriguez, was killed and
Patrick Chauvel, a photographer on assignment for Newsweek, was
wounded. The shooting was a tragic mistake; the approaching
vehicle was carrying American soldiers.

    Elsewhere, a boat filled with Noriega gunmen landed at one
of the San Blas islands off Panama's Caribbean coast and took
hostage eleven people working at a Smithsonian Institutions
marine-research project. The group, including five Americans,
was taken to the mainland and forced to march into the jungle.
Next day, they were abandoned without food and finally rescued.
At the international airport two terrified American women were
threatened with death by a group of 30 P.D.F. soldiers, who used
them as a shield against U.S. paratroopers surrounding the
terminal. The two were freed just before dawn after the American
soldiers told the gunmen that Noriega had been killed and their
cause was futile.

    That episode illustrated Noriega's crucial role in the
continuing resistance. American commanders have made capturing
him a high priority, since as long as he remains at large, some
Panamanian units might rally around him. Yet the wily dictator
managed to evade the net. American troops surrounded the Cuban
and Nicaraguan embassies in Panama City to prevent Noriega from
seeking refuge. Six hours after the invasion began, U.S.
soldiers burst into the "Witch House," a Noriega residence on
the Pacific coastline. Inside, they found cigarettes still
smoldering in ashtrays, suggesting that the strongman might have
slipped away only moments before. Later on Wednesday, Noriega's
apparently tape-recorded voice was heard on a private FM
station, exhorting his supporters "to win or die, not one step
back."

    That appeal may have worked. As U.S. forces moved into the
chaotic streets of Panama City, they faced not only widespread
looting but also pervasive sniper fire from the Dignity
Battalions and a few black-uniformed members of an elite
special-forces unit. On Friday, as Pentagon briefers asserted
that organized resistance in Panama City had faded, Noriega
loyalists opened fire on the car of newly installed First Vice
President Ricardo Arias Calderon as it sped away from the
National Assembly building. Arias was unhurt. Mortar shells
landed near the U.S. Southern Command Headquarters at Quarry
Heights, and fighting erupted at a nearby police station.
Thurman said that the fighting seemed to be "centrally
controlled" and that Noriega himself might be "the guiding
force." He estimated that 1,800 irregular troops might be
involved.

    If the resistance persists for long, Operation Just Cause
may lose some of its sheen. As the Pentagon boasted, immense
force was speedily dispatched to Panama, the canal was quickly
protected, key P.D.F. installations were overrun or neutralized,
and Noriega was removed from any effective power. The cost,
however, may have been a distressingly high loss of life among
Panamanian civilians. An unofficial check of hospitals showed
that more than 200 noncombatants had died. A drawn-out struggle
with rising American casualties also loomed. At week's end, as
2,000 more troops were sent into Panama, the Pentagon conceded
that it might take more than a week for Operation Just Cause to
pacify the tiny nation's capital.