< http://www.outlookindia.com > Still Humouring Musharraf? USA's Afghan Ops: critical analysis III: The "save Musharraf whatever be his perfidies of the past" syndrome, despite suggestions of a double game now, continues. B. Raman
The use by the US of B-52 bombers for carpet bombing of the Taliban's frontline positions in Northern Afghanistan for the last three days lends itself to two interpretations:
1]After having been infrastructure-intensive since the start of the offensive on October 7, 2001, the US air strikes are becoming body-intensive, focusing on the concentrations of the foot-jehadis of the Taliban militia, facing the Northern Alliance. These foot-jehadis consist of Pakistanis (the largest number -- 9,500 out of an estimated total of about 12,000), the Afghan Pashtoons (the second largest with about 2,000) and the Arabs of the 055 Brigade of Osama bin Laden (about 500). Sustained infliction of casualties on them and the movement of their body bags to Southern and Eastern Afghanistan could have a greater demoralising effect on the Taliban leadership than the infrastructure damage inflicted till now. Even before October 7, 2001, there was hardly any infrastructure in a functional state; as such, the earlier air strikes did not serve the US objective of rooting out the set-ups of bin Laden and the Taliban. Right from the beginning, the air strikes should have been body-intensive.
2]There seems to be a creeping realisation in Washington DC that over-sensitivity to the concerns and demands of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's self-reinstated Chief of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled Chief Executive and self-promoted President, was coming in the way of an effective pursuit of the US objectives. It was the deference to his concerns that the Northern Alliance's capture of Kabul should not be facilitated by the US and fears in Washington DC that the continued arrival of body bags of the Pakistanis from the frontline might destabilise Musharraf's position which explained the ambivalence of the US so far with regard to any no-holds-barred attack on the Taliban's frontline concentrations. The B-52 carpet bombings indicate that these factors may no longer be the determining element in influencing the shape of the US operations hereafter. However, the "save Musharraf whatever be his perfidies of the past" syndrome continues to be an important influence on the USA's political and military leadership and one cannot, therefore, be too certain that this change may remain sustained. This is what is worrying the Northern Alliance and inhibiting it from moving forward lest the US, under Musharraf's pressure, revert to its earlier policy of pointless strikes on non-functional infrastructure rather than on the Taliban's foot-jehadis.
Despite the carpet-bombing, the Taliban's morale is still good, but could show signs of weakening if the body-intensive attacks are kept up. The entire war effort of the Taliban is now being orchestrated by a brains-trust of retired officers of Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment headed by Lt.Gen. (retd) Hamid Gul and Lt.Gen.(retd) Javed Nasir, both former Directors-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), who have been closely interacting with Gen.Mohammad Aziz, Chairman Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the clandestine Chief of Staff of Pakistan's Army of Islam. The influence still wielded by Aziz over the Taliban and the Pakistani jehadi elements would be evident from the fact that Musharraf had to seek his intervention to pressure the Mullas of the Binori madrasa in Karachi to go to the Northern Areas (Gilgit and Baltistan) and persuade the tribals who had blocked the Karakoram Highway to disperse.
Volunteers and arms supplies continue to reach the Taliban from Pakistan without the military and civilian authorities doing anything to stop them. The Taliban has had a fresh flow of volunteers not only from Pakistan, but also from the Pakistani diaspora abroad, including the US and the UK. There has also been a flow of new Arab volunteers, particularly from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
At the prayer meetings in the Binori mosque, not only bin Laden, but also the terrorists who organised the strikes in the US on September 11,2001, are being hailed as saviours of Islam. Surprisingly -- and significantly -- while the Taliban and bin Laden's Al Qaeda have stepped up their fatwa wars against the US, personal criticism of Musharraf has been either largely non-existent or muted in Afghanistan itself. This strengthens suspicions of a double game by Musharraf -- overt support to the US to destroy the Taliban and the Al Qaeda and covert support to these organisation to avoid their destruction.
The Taliban, under the guidance of the brains-trust mentioned above, continues to have the better of the US in its psychological warfare. The USA's Psywar has been inept and devoid of imagination. The visuals of Al Jazeera continue to have a major impact on the thinking in the Islamic world and the denials and counter-statements of Pentagon spokesmen with regard to the Taliban's allegations of civilian casualties, as telecast by the BBC and the CNN, are hardly taken seriously.
The daily press conferences of the Taliban Ambassador in Islamabad are receiving greater publicity than those of the Pentagon spokesmen in Washington DC. There is a need for an on-the-spot media briefing by US spokesmen in Islamabad to dilute the effect of the Taliban propaganda.
The US Central Command had arranged a visit to its aircraft carriers and other ships by a group of India and Pakistan based journalists, but the whole exercise was carried out in a shockingly unimaginative and insensitive manner. Instead of well-informed and articulate spokesmen of the US Central Command briefing them on matters such as the precautions being taken to avoid civilian casualties and bombings by mistakes of mosques and madrasas even if they are known to be used as barracks and arms storage depots etc, much of the visuals was about life for the US soldiers on board the aircraft carriers, how well they are taken care of; what food they eat, how many times a day etc. One of the persons interviewed was the chief cook of an aircraft carrier. A totally insensitive projection to the Islamic world at a time when thousands of Afghans inside Afghanistan and in the Pakistan-based refugee camps are suffering due to disease and malnutrition.
New Delhi could be a very important base for the USA's psywar campaign because India's private TV channels have a much larger viewership in the Islamic world than those of Pakistan or Al Jazeera, but no effort seems to have been made to use even this asset imaginatively lest Musharraf misunderstand.
One also notices considerable confusion in thinking in Washington DC regarding the objectives and priorities. Objective and priority No 1 should have been from the first day, or should be at least from now onwards, the elimination of bin Laden, his associates and their terrorist set-up. Only then, the political question of the future dispensation in Afghanistan should have been taken up.
Instead, by cunningly injecting the political question of the future dispensation, Musharraf has managed to take the focus away from this first objective and priority. This is not the time to worry about "who and what after the Taliban" . This is the time to worry about how to pulverise the terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan and Pakistan and make sure that they would not be able to do another September 11.
If as a result of the initial aim being the crushing of the Taliban and the Al Qaeda, there is going to be a temporary power vacuum in Afghanistan, so be it. That should have been the approach of the US. Instead of spending all the time and energy for finding ways of achieving the first objective, so much time and energy has already been wasted in discussing who should be in power in Kabul in future.
Ultimately, an effective neutralisation of the ISI-backed terrorist infrastructure in Afghanistan could be achieved only through a clandestine covert action mounted with the support of objective local allies. Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment, with its covert linkages with the terrorists, and the Pashtun population on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border could never be the objective allies of the US in such covert action. Even the anti-Taliban Pashtoons are sympathetic to bin Laden.
In the entire Islamic world of one billion plus, only the five million strong Tadjiks of Northern Afghanistan look upon bin Laden as a terrorist, as an enemy of their community, as an enemy of Islam and as an enemy of humanity because he had their leader Ahmed Shah Masood assassinated by two Algerians of the Al Qaeda. Only they could have been the objective allies of the US.
Unwisely, Washington, in its eagerness to humour Musharraf, has till now scorned the Tadjiks, who are hated by Musharraf because he looks upon them as pro-India. Thereby, Washington has denied itself the most effective way of crushing the bin Laden set-up in Afghanistan.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai).