For a long haul

By Rasul Bakhsh Rais
The writer is Director, Area Study Centre, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad

The American strategy in Afghanistan represents an uneasy mix of heavy reliance on the most sophisticated and highly destructive weapons employed mostly from the air but occasionally from the Arabian Sea and the fragments of Northern Alliance unwilling to come out of the trenches. The large-scale supply of weapons, and many military advisors from different countries including the United States have failed to lift the spirits of the Northern troops singed by repeated defeats at the hands of the Taliban. For many years, the leaders of the Northern Alliance have tried to cover up their incompetence and military and political weakness to confront the Taliban by either accusing Pakistan of supporting the student militia or their foreign allies, Russia, Iran and Tajikistan for not giving them enough weapons and money. This is a typical logic of all losers no matter what the arena.

One wonders what stands between the Northern Alliance and the rest of Afghanistan when Pakistan has switched sides and is now part of the international coalition waging war against the Taliban regime. At the same time, the United States, Britain and some other countries have begun assisting the Northern Alliance and its traditional allies have substantially increased supply of weapons. The troops of the Northern Alliance have not come out of the holes that they had dug about five years back, while their commanders and exalted generals are safely perched far behind the lines sharing intelligence that they can only gather by long-range telescopes. One is amused and finds it farcical that some troops of the Northern Alliance are shown on television riding on horses charging on the Taliban positions, while the American aircraft are shown bombing the 'military assets' of the Taliban from B-52s. I am quite confused weather war makes strange bedfellows or strange bedfellows make war in this distant and treacherous land, which has known only wars and strange bedfellows for the past quarter of a century.

The Northern Alliance is so clumsy and ill prepared that it wants the United States to bomb the frontline Taliban positions even if it requires use of cluster bombs. These bombs are really more painful than tactical nuclear weapons, and the Northern warlords would not mind anything against their fellow Afghans as long as it helps get their way cleared to the Kabul highway. Their commanders and spokesman on television begging the United States to drop heavier bombs on their arch foes, the Taliban. One must understand the agony and pain they have suffered in repeated defeats, but what one does not comprehend is their frequent show of political naivety in suggesting that wanton death and destruction of the Taliban facing them on the frontlines would lead them to enduring paradise of power.

Those who have studied war, politics and society in Afghanistan for decades feel at loss how the American strategy is being hijacked by group of commanders of the Northern Alliance who made war an industry in the country. Even some of the Americans and Westerners who are trying to know Afghanistan for the first time would readily admit that the Northern Alliance is not the solution. Betting on this wrong horse would be doubly costly for the stability and security of the entire region, and for the American men and material.

The American strategy seems to be shifting from its initial goals of tracing out the perpetrators of the terrorists attacks in New York and Washington and bringing them to justice to more ambitious, and perhaps risky objectives. Influenced largely by the anger and belligerent public mood in the domestic environment, the American policy in Afghanistan appears to be achieving a complex set of political and military goals in a difficult and uncertain foreign environment.

After pounding a wide range of military assets for three weeks in a bid to cripple their ability to fight as an effective ground force, the American bombardments have accomplished very little in terms of causing the collapse of the regime. The Taliban have been deft in hiding and dispersing their weapons and ammunition along with the leaders. The Taliban are preparing for a long war as compared to the short and decisive war which Americans have become used to and have invested heavily in the material and technologies to fight and win such a war.

The Taliban forces have not run away in panic from the frontlines against the Northern Alliance even under the most intimidating bombings. They have, so far, stood their ground and have absorbed the cluster bombs. If the American succeed in clearing these Taliban standing in the way of the Northern Alliance, the victory will be short-lived. The Taliban riding on the wave of sympathy and resentment of the Pashtuns, if the Northern Alliance captures Kabul under the smoke of American bombs, the militia would present formidable resistance to any future political set up.

It seems the American strategists are too eager to get some foothold inside Afghanistan, sanitise it and conduct ground operations from there. In the first instance, their eyes seem to be focussed on Mazar-i-Sharif and then Kabul. It is for this reason that they have concentrated their bombings of the Taliban troops around these two cities where the frontlines have been static for years. May be Americans succeed here by bringing down the wrath of their high-tech war machine on the ill-equipped Taliban and their highly diminished military capability, the political objectives of peace and stability may get farther removed from a realisable point. Wars against the weak are easier to launch but difficult to win if the adversaries like the Taliban have a high degree of motivation and willingness to die for a cause.

The fear is that the war against the Taliban might get the Americans bogged down in one of the most difficult terrains with hundreds of thousands of caves, tunnels and mountain peaks. They lost their neutrality and sense of political direction and a solid purpose of the war, if it had any to begin with, the moment they opted for the Northern Alliance. With less than fifteen percent representation of the population, they offer little hope of unifying or stabilising the country. It is not too late to rethink the war and its objectives and get back to the political chessboard. Otherwise, the Americans and the coalition they are leading in Afghanistan must prepare for a long haul and an uncertain outcome.

[republished with permission by the author from www.jang.com.pk]

Date/Time Last Modified: 6/3/2004 7:08:05 AM

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