Taliban cannot withstand an Allied assault

Ejaz Haider

The Friday Times (Lahore), October 5

The US is set to strike at the Taliban militia in Afghanistan. The questions of what kind of strategy it would use on the ground and whether it would come out successful where other powers before it failed are being hotly debated. Most analysts, not least in Pakistan, think Washington is about to make a mistake. "You can get into Afghanistan, but you can’t get out," is how the refrain goes. Is that correct? No, I think not.

It is true that Afghanistan has always been a difficult project. It is a rugged country inhabited by hardy, largely nomadic peoples. The writ of the state has never really extended beyond the urban centres and some military garrisons. The state has traditionally interfaced with the tribes in the countryside through chieftains and exercised its power indirectly. Lack of modern infrastructure, the independence of people in the countryside, their nomadic way of life, the rugged topography -- all these factors combine to make it difficult for an invader to conquer in the sense of capturing territory and exploiting the gains. The Soviet army found itself besieged in towns and garrisons while the mujahideen roamed the countryside freely, striking at Soviet-Afghan convoys at will.

What would save the US from the same fate? Firstly, the last time round the Afghans fought in a bipolar world order. It was a massive covert operation involving the diplomatic, intelligence and military efforts of a host of state actors, some of them the richest in the world. The Soviet Union, as is now known, wanted to get out even as it had walked into Afghanistan. It was only through the efforts of the United States that it could not do so. Its military presence, therefore, was no match to the firepower and resources that the US plans to bring in and around Afghanistan this time.

Secondly, the PDPA government to which the Soviets extended their support was a hugely unpopular government. The countryside rose in revolt against it and the sentiment was shared by the majority of the population, including the Pushtoon and the other ethnic minorities.

Thirdly, since the PDPA government failed comprehensively to make a political breakthrough, the Soviets soon ran out of military options, remaining content with carrying out a holding operation. This also owed to the fact that given the topography and the traditional patterns of social behaviour, in the absence of any political breakthrough, the Soviet army could hold on to nothing more than the garrisons it was already occupying. Its convoys and patrols in the countryside were relentlessly attacked by the mujahideen. With years passing by and attrition setting in, the morale of the Soviet troops sank so low that hundreds of them began to sell their weapons and equipment to the mujahideen and got involved in a massive smuggling operation.

That situation does not persist any more. The United States is planning the operation carefully. Far from using massive force, it is likely to identify its targets and launch focussed strikes for maximum effect. The Soviet troops walked into Afghanistan and rammed right into a national consensus against the dispensation that they had come to support and sustain. Washington is moving in to rid the country of a militia that may not be hugely popular even among the Pushtoon tribes because of its various policies. And all its non-military efforts are geared towards sending out that signal.

There are four categories of actors in today’s Afghanistan: the Taliban, the Northern Alliance, the Afghan diaspora and the Afghan refugees. The Taliban comprise the original madrassah-based students, the Pushtoon PDPA elements from the Khalq faction, the turncoat field commanders of the groups that retreated in the face of Taliban onslaught and the non-Afghan elements or the guest militants. Within the Taliban the cleavage runs along tribal and moderates/hardliners lines.

The Northern Alliance is a loose conglomeration of former mujahideen commanders and their remnant troops. Primarily Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara, it also has Pushtoon elements from Hezb (Hekmatyar) and Ittehad-e-Islami (Sayyaf) parties. Most of these parties were discredited by 1994 when the Taliban emerged on the scene. The feuding among these parties allowed local commanders to run their fiefdoms. In short, they comprehensively failed to provide an alternative after the departure of the PDPA government. This scenario contributed in no little degree to the initial Taliban successes. However, the civil war since then, the inability of the Taliban to provide a better alternative despite general peace under areas controlled by the militia, the strict enforcement of Shariah laws and the Taliban’s treatment of women and children may have worked in favour of some elements of the Alliance. The civil war has also done much to broaden the Pushtoon-non-Pushtoon divide.

The Afghan diaspora includes varied strands: royalists, intellectuals, technocrats, neutral Afghans and even women groups like the Revolutionary Afghan Women Association (RAWA). Some of them like the royalists have a vested interest in getting back into the driver’s seat but most others have been floating around, settled in Pakistan and other parts of the world, watching the events unfold in their native country with horror but unable to do much more than watch. They could play a crucial role now.

Finally, there are the Afghan refugees. Throughout the war with the Soviet Union, this population provided manpower to mujahideen groups. But it also included a huge majority of non-combatants, including women, old people and children. This is a mixed lot, but the majority wants peace and is sick of the internecine civil war. On the whole they are likely to welcome any effort that could bring back a modicum of peace and normalcy to Afghanistan.

It is in the backdrop of this Afghanistan that the US strikes will take place. The US strategy is already evolving along three identifiable lines. Preparing for the military strikes; putting in place a broad-based government and following it up with efforts to reconstruct that country and depriving the Taliban of any sanctuaries for a long guerilla war by bringing the regional actors, most importantly Pakistan, onboard.

Militarily, the US will keep the strikes focused by identifying specific targets to avoid collateral damage. Even the Northern Alliance, which has extended support to Washington, has warned against any massive, large-scale use of force. That in any case seems unlikely given the contours of the US strategy. Politically, the US is attempting to isolate the Taliban by trying to get as many Afghans involved in the post-Taliban political process as it can. This strategy is also important in terms of giving greater legitimacy to any post-Taliban dispensation. The 3-day meeting of opposition groups in Rome seems to have resulted in a formula for a transitional set-up through a 120-member supreme council. One Northern Alliance member has been reported as saying that the council would include elements from the Taliban. This is good thinking and would appeal to the moderates within the militia. The signal is also meant to allay Islamabad’s fears that any non-Taliban arrangement might be hostile to Pakistan.

In fact, if the US is serious in its efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan, wean it away from the self-destructive mode in which it has gone, flush out radical elements and reconstruct it, it will need Pakistan. Any attempt therefore to reduce Pakistan’s significance would be detrimental to the long-term US plan. It appears that Washington realises that.

The US strategy will rely on efforts to secure the major urban centres, bring in elements opposed to the Taliban to set up a transitional government, flush out the radical elements from their hideouts and ensure that armed resistance from the Taliban would be short and not result in too many casualties. Washington seems to hope that the cohesion of the Taliban troops will not last long and the moderates and those commanders who have stayed with the Taliban so far for reasons other than conviction would ditch the militia when the crunch comes. The Taliban, of course, will rely on retaining and sustaining their cohesion. However, states around Afghanistan supporting hostile action against the militia, even if not directly participating in combat, will make it increasingly difficult for the Taliban to sustain guerilla operations against the invading army.

Pakistan kept the covert war going and it helped again to sustain the Taliban. That situation has changed now. The Central Asian Republics (CARs), notably Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have been anti-Taliban for a long time. Special forces from the US and the UK are already present in the two states and these military contacts are neither sudden nor new. The CARs made their first military contacts with the US in 1994-95 under NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) programme. Under PfP, the CARs, with the exception of Turkmenistan, set up the Central Asian battalion (Centrasbat). This battalion has been exercising with the US troops since 1995 every year with breaks in 1996 and 1999. Information from the US reveals that in September 1997, 800 participants from Centrasbat, US, Turkey and Russia, including 500 US paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division flew directly from the US to drop-sites in Uzbekistan in what has been described as the "longest non-stop aerial deployment in U.S. history."

Information indicates that the US military increased its outreach to the area this year and the new CentCom commander, General Tommy Franks, arrived in the area for an extensive trip that included Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Washington has also made efforts to engage Turkmenistan, which has a tendency of remaining neutral and is the only Central Asian Republic with an unguarded border with Afghanistan. Clearly, the US troops are not likely to face problems of inter-operability; they know the militaries in the area and the topography and have been using the area to also do physical reconnaissance -- through contacts with the Northern Alliance -- and gather human and signal intelligence. Information has also come out on previous attempts by the US to capture or kill bin Ladin, including through the use of Pakistan army commandos.

Given these facts it seems that the Taliban will have a very limited ability to sustain operations against the US troops. This is especially so, since their only bet is guerilla warfare. However, difficulties could arise for the US in other areas, like making the next dispensation work, besides the issue of Washington’s military presence. But that is a different story.