[Another angle on the suspended attack on Kabul, among other things]
[Posted at WorldNetDaily.com, the site Jude mentioned as running the Buchanan column]
STRATFOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE UPDATE
What's the strategy in Afghanistan?
Taliban has options, Northern Alliance has weaknesses
Over time, wars tend to take on a definable shape. Attack leads to
shock; shock leads to plans. Plans are implemented. Implementation
encounters frictions, and the enemy reshapes his own strategy in
response. The war begins to coalesce into a recognizable form.
This war is different. It doesn't quite want to gel on the American
side. The reason for this is that more than any other recent war, the
geopolitical dimension keeps destabilizing the military dimension. To
be more precise, the politics are so complex and uncertain that the
United States cannot create a stable platform for military planning.
The United States has made its first response to the events of Sept.
11. The response was highly predictable, drawn from the core of
American strategic doctrine. The response began with air attacks,
designed to achieve command of the air so that other operations could
take place unhindered. Then the attacks will move toward attacking the
command and control facilities of the enemy. Finally, they turn to
attacks on the enemy's ground forces.
The first phase was relatively short and effortless, given the
Taliban's air defense capabilities. The second phase, now occurring,
is more difficult, for the same reason that the first phase was
relatively easy. The relative underdevelopment of Afghan
infrastructure makes it difficult to degrade Afghan command and
control capabilities. Apart from being hard to hit, the targets tend
to recover fairly quickly. This has forced the United States to launch
anti-army operations in parallel with counter-command and control
operations.
In general, this is not a critical problem, but it does point out a
peculiarity of this campaign. During both Desert Storm and Kosovo, a
large part of the air campaign was carried out by ground-based
tactical air power provided by the Air Force. Because of basing
issues, that is not the case in this war. The Air Force's contribution
is strategic air capabilities its bomber force flying extended
missions from as far away as the United States. Tactical air power is
being provided by the U.S. Navy, whose carriers are in the Arabian
Sea.
The lack of Air Force tactical air limits the intensity of the
attacks. The tempo of operations are limited by the number of sorties
that can be flown at the distances involved, as well as by the
relatively low number of strike aircraft that carriers can launch.
Now, on a certain level, the effort produced is commensurate with the
target set involved. The job is getting done. But the level of effort
may not be commensurate with what is required in the next phase of the
war.
The Northern Alliance is being primed for an assault on Kabul. It is
not clear when or even if they will launch that offensive. There are
many who would be very unhappy to see the Northern Alliance take
Kabul. That includes the Pakistanis, but it also involves many Afghan
elements that the United States is trying to draw into an anti-Taliban
coalition. Moreover, it is not clear that the Northern Alliance, by
itself, would be able to beat the Taliban. Certainly, they have not
done particularly well in offensive operations in recent years. If the
Northern Alliance was slaughtered on the way to Kabul, its leadership
would lose its following. The leaders might not be particularly eager
to take that chance.
Moreover, if an attack comes, the United States will be hard-pressed
to provide the kind of close air support that the Northern might
require. The strategic bombers can do an excellent job of bombing
ground forces, but they are not particularly useful for close air
support missions which require extremely rapid response, relatively
small amounts of munitions and extreme precision. The Navy is a long
way from the northern battlefield, and tactical mission requirements
can dwarf the number of aircraft available. Even if Air Force aircraft
are based in Oman, the distances involved make extended patrolling
over a land battle difficult.
Therefore, the United States has two choices. Assuming as STRATFOR
does that Pakistan is not a basing option for large numbers of
tactical aircraft, the United States can ask to build up a tactical
air force in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which would be a logistical
nightmare, or it could ask the Russians to provide air support. The
Russians might be willing, but the strategic price for the United
States would be high. Higher still would be the political price inside
Afghanistan, where Russian air power is not remembered fondly.
Building a national anti-Taliban coalition around Russian air power is
not going to work.
That means the Northern Alliance will have to attack without tactical
close air support, but with strategic bombardment. The Taliban will be
hurt and hurt badly by U.S. cluster bombs, but when the close-in
fighting starts the Northern Alliance will be on its own, with
whatever armor and artillery the Russians are able to provide.
All of this has slowed up the attack by the Northern Alliance. They
are not sure they want to do it and if they do, they probably need
more logistical support from the Russians than received to date. For
political reasons, the United States is not sure it can afford to have
the Northern Alliance be the ones to eliminate the Taliban. and is
therefore busy making the case to Afghans and Pakistanis alike that a
victory in Kabul for the Northern Alliance would not mean a government
of Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance. All of this is taking place
as winter and Ramadan draw close.
The United States is hoping that the air campaign alone will break the
back of the Taliban. The first hope is that the rest of the country,
appalled at the air war, will hold the Taliban responsible for it and
move from sullen submission to active hostility. The second hope is
that the air campaign will split the Taliban itself. There is a
certain logic to this hope. The Taliban fought very hard to take
power, and its leadership enjoys holding power. If the leadership were
to decide that they were in a hopeless position in the long run, some
or many of them might decide that overthrowing Mullah Mohammed Omar
and repudiating his policies is the best way to preserve their own
position.
That hope in Washington has become a driving force in the air
campaign. Unlike Desert Storm, in which the air campaign was the
preface for a carefully planned ground offensive, there is no ground
offensive in the offing here, unless you count the Northern Alliance.
The air campaign therefore has a direct political purpose to break the
Taliban now, before winter sets in. Failing that, it is meant to lay
the groundwork for intense political activity among various Afghan
tribes over the winter with an eye toward a spring offensive.
The Taliban understands this. Right now, it is occupying the major
cities and other clearly defined bases. It is being pounded by U.S.
air power. It has two options.
First, Taliban leaders can decide to send non-combatants across the
border to Pakistan and disperse its forces in the countryside, immune
from strategic air power. It would leave a covering force in and in
front of Kabul to raise the price of an attack by the Northern
Alliance, but the bulk of its forces would be saved and ready to fight
in the spring.
The second, parallel option is to stage strategic attacks in the
United States. The Taliban understands that the more extreme the
American anger, the more frustrated the United States will be with
questionable allies like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Just as the United
States wants to create an anti-Taliban coalition inside of
Afghanistan, the Taliban wants to create an anti-American coalition
outside of Afghanistan. For this, it needs American help. It needs the
United States to force its aircraft and troops into Pakistan and to
create a crisis with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. That isn't
happening at the moment.
It follows, therefore, that a combined strategy of dispersing Taliban
troops, combined with another round of attacks in the United States,
might force Washington to overextend its position and create the
political conditions the Taliban badly needs. Thus, the current
movements we see inside of Afghanistan may be part of a Taliban plan,
and the current FBI warnings of imminent danger of attack might be
serious indeed. The Taliban has every reason to stage an attack, and
quickly.
Thus, two factors keep the United States from creating a stable
military plan. One is the incredible complexity of the reality on the
ground. The second is that the United States is dealing with an enemy
that has options. Unlike the Serbs or the Iraqis, who were in the
position of hold or capitulate, the Taliban has a more nuanced set of
options available. The air attacks are designed to break the Taliban
before they can implement new plans. If that doesn't work, the Taliban
can create an even more complex situation for the United States than
ever before.
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