By Thomas E. Ricks and Steven Mufson Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, September 23, 2001; Page A03
As the buildup of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf region gathers steam, the Bush administration is pursuing its war on terrorism along less traditional fronts as well, moving to freeze terrorists' assets, pressuring their state supporters through diplomacy and putting in motion covert operations against their networks.
The visible military operations and the other, less observable, actions promise to be the two sides of this war. They will make it less like traditional wars the United States has fought and, in many respects, more like the war against drugs that the country has been pursuing for at least two decades, military experts said.
Like the war on drugs, it will be long. It will rely less on conventional weaponry and more on special operations raids, covert attacks and entirely nonmilitary means. Indeed, the less observable realms of intelligence, finance, diplomacy and computer warfare may prove to be the major arenas of the effort, with military operations in a supporting role that will steal the headlines but tell only part of the story.
"It's closer to the type of complexity in controlling international drugs than [it is to] Desert Storm," said retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who led the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division against Iraqi forces in the Persian Gulf War a decade ago and later headed the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Bill Clinton. "It requires an interagency effort by the Defense, Justice and State [departments]."
The diffuse, complex nature of the administration's emerging strategy for combating terrorism also points to the likely tactics it will use - and on its ultimate targets, according to military experts.
"Nobody believes that the way to fight the war on drugs is to concentrate on the hapless mule who carries cocaine through an airport," said Richard Perle, a policy strategist in the Pentagon during the Reagan administration. Likewise, he said, in the war against terrorism "you go after the source. You go after the producers, the big fish. And the equivalent of the producers, the drug lords, are not the terrorists but the countries that harbor them."
President Bush has made clear that the administration's initial focus will likely be accused terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. But the most important target in this war - what military theorists call the enemy's "center of gravity" - could prove to be the governments that give sanctuary to terrorists, rather than the terrorists themselves, specialists in military planning said.
There is every indication that the war will start - or has started - in Afghanistan, where bin Laden has based his operations since 1996. Although the Pentagon refuses to comment on covert operations, there were rumblings in the Defense Department last week that a counteroffensive was already under way. Indeed, the Taliban militia claimed yesterday to have shot down an unmanned U.S. reconnaissance drone over Afghanistan. The Pentagon had no comment on the report.
The military action in Afghanistan, both covert and overt, is likely to rely heavily on intelligence and operations by U.S. Special Forces. "This is the most information-intensive war you can imagine," one Defense Department official said. "I think it is going to put us to the test in many ways."
If the Persian Gulf War was more like football, with its lengthy buildup and diagrammed maneuvers, this war likely will resemble soccer, with its fluidity and improvisation. It will be a difficult sort of war to command, execute and analyze, military experts predict. "It is going to require a different mind-set," said one officer involved in planning for it.
Officials say that although there eventually could be military action in places other than Afghanistan, the administration has yet to decide on those plans. To give the Pentagon more flexibility, however, the administration has deployed aircraft carriers, a Marine expeditionary unit and scores of warplanes to the region. In an unprecedented move, some aircraft are being sent to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, two of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.
If the military component in the administration's war against terrorism is only half the battle, the other half will include financial, economic, law enforcement, domestic security, diplomatic and intelligence elements, officials said. And their desired effect will be psychological as well as tactical.
"Now we have a clear enemy who is not only trying to do us great damage, but is also trying to terrorize us . . . to paralyze us by terrorizing us," said Robert B. Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative who was a senior aide to Secretary of State James A. Baker III during the Gulf War. "Our response has to counter fear and panic."
Here is how some facets of the struggle are taking shape:
On the diplomatic front, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has reached out to European allies, Arab nations, China and Russia in an effort to isolate Afghanistan and make it difficult for bin Laden to find refuge. The United Arab Emirates severed relations with the Taliban, and Iran and Pakistan sealed their borders.
Powell has also reached out to sometime foes - such as Syria and Iran - urging them to abandon their past policies of supporting terrorist groups. While asserting that they had no illusions about the chances for such changes, Powell and Bush have indicated to the two countries that now would be a chance for a new start.
On the economic front, the administration has sought to use trade and aid to offer incentives to wavering nations and assurance to friends. It moved last week to lift U.S. sanctions on Pakistan that had been imposed because of displeasure with Islamabad's nuclear weapons program. And it held out the possibility of throwing U.S. support behind the rescheduling of talks that were already moving forward on Pakistan's more than $30 billion in debt if it withdraws its support from the Taliban and helps the U.S. war effort.
The administration also bolstered trade ties with Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation, whose president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, made a previously scheduled visit to Washington to see Bush. Indonesia, a moderate Muslim country, has been used as a base by terrorist networks in the past.
On the financial front, the United States is looking for help from Europe, where many of the hijackers in the Sept. 11 suicide attacks on New York and Washington had lived, schooled or transited on their way to the United States. Several European allies, including Britain, Italy, Germany and Spain, have seized bank accounts suspected of being linked to bin Laden or other terrorist organizations.
Bush is expected to take the next step Monday by signing an executive order designating some individuals and groups as terrorist and freezing their assets.
The administration is also trying to get better intelligence information on the bin Laden network. China agreed to send an interagency group of counterterrorism experts to share information. The administration is also pressuring Pakistan, which is considered the country with the best intelligence on the Taliban and bin Laden, to cooperate.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the Persian Gulf states - home to financial backers and recruits for terrorist networks - could also provide useful information to the United States. Some of those countries, such as Saudi Arabia and Yemen, have not been completely forthcoming in the past, some U.S. officials say. Saudi Arabia pledged its support in the investigation of this month's attacks and has already delivered dossiers on some individuals as requested by the FBI.
It will be difficult to measure the success of these different approaches. And it is likely to be equally difficult to tell when the war is over.
Asked to define "victory" in the war against terrorism last week, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had difficulty coming up with a concise answer. After 500 words of hovering, he landed on his definition. "I say that victory is persuading the American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick matter that is going to be over in a month or a year or even five years," he said.
McCaffrey, a veteran of the Vietnam War, the Gulf War and the drug war, said the answer was probably more like New York City's successful war on crime. "At the end of the day, you have to ask a mom whether she feels safe going out with her children," he said. "If she answers no, then you haven't done the job.