We drop a bomb here and a bomb there, and the enemy replies by singing songs? I’ve been to a number of fronts as a NEWSWEEK correspondent, including with the American military in Vietnam and Iraq, and if this tempo continues, Osama bin Laden will be in Afghanistan–and the Americans will be, too–this time next year. In Vietnam the sky would have been painted with the red flames and black smoke of napalm, the horizon would have been jiggling under “arc lights”–the force of three B-52s dropping 90 tons of bombs in unison. In the gulf war, the tank unit I accompanied, the Tiger Brigade, rolled into Kuwait only after three months of ferocious bombing. As we approached, terrified Iraqis tripped over each other to surrender. I don’t see that happening with the Taliban. They’re not under great pressure, and all they have to do is just sit there and stay alive.
The Americans’ main problem is that, despite their denials, they are bound to a timetable. Whatever the administration may say, this campaign cannot drag on for years. The American people want action fast, and that means killing or capturing Osama bin Laden first, then dismantling the Taliban soon, not at some distant point when the Twin Towers have been rebuilt. At the same time, the United States must move fast in order to hold together its fragile Islamic coalition, already disturbed by Afghan civilian casualties. Washington needs to show some success before Ramadan–the Muslim holy month that this year begins on Nov. 17. The onset of winter, also next month, closes up high passes and many of the country’s rudimentary roads, and traditionally brings fighting to a virtual standstill.
On the other hand, moving that fast militarily could create an equally dangerous diplomatic problem. Only the dreamers believe that in just a few weeks the United States, while running a war, and the United Nations, never among the most nimble of organizations, might somehow cobble together a future non-Taliban regime for Afghanistan. Just some of the anti-Taliban Afghan leaders met in Peshawar last week. There were 800 of them, bearded old men, shouting and ranting away. And those 800 did not include any representatives from two vital camps–the king and the Northern Alliance. Forming a viable alternative to the Taliban could take years.
The enemy commanders in this campaign are hardened veterans of the successful war against the Soviets. Moscow sent thousands of murderous ground troops, and until near the end, controlled the skies with Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships, which blasted everything and everyone in sight. You can bet the old anti-Soviet cadres are telling the young recruits today, in Pashto, Urdu and Arabic, “Son, this is nothing. When the Russians were here, this ground ran with our blood to the horizon–and we still drove those infidels from our sacred soil.”
It’s easy to see what the enemy strategy is. Hang on for the next few weeks until Ramadan and the winter. Wait for the Americans to get so desperate for victory they have to send in ground troops. Polish off some of these ground troops and (as promised already) drag their bodies through the streets, as was done in Somalia, and wait for the will of the United States to crumble. I’m not saying it will, but the alternative, to put in U.S. troops for perhaps years, hardly bears thinking about.
If you are bin Laden or Mullah Omar, you also wait for outside help. This aid will come from bin Laden’s well-organized agents and allies across the world, and from the huge armed militias in Pakistan, already seething on the verge of revolt. If the conflict drags on, these wanna-be jihadis will be targeting U.S. soldiers at bases in Pakistan, planning bombings and hijackings. They may also take the fight to Kashmir, where guerrillas staged a bloody suicide attack on the Parliament building in Srinagar on Oct. 1, killing nearly 40 people. That incident has New Delhi muttering about pursuing militants into Pakistan-controlled Kashmir or bombing training camps across the border. Either action could provoke a full-fledged war between the two nuclear powers, while American troops continue operations nearby.
The way to get bin Laden and win this war has to be the traditional Afghan way. Send agents with (literally) tens of millions of dollars to buy his hide, and pay the Taliban to defect. It might work; similar strategies have in the past. Fighting the Afghans never has.
