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COMMENTARY
October 8, 2001
Looking through fire
As an American opening it looked fairly conventional; almost Clintonesque in its evasion of direct risk and casualties. It was not prompt. The cruise missile and air strikes were on a scale that could have been supported by assets that were in place two weeks ago. A last-minute diplomatic push to clinch overflight and support agreements led by Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair was waited out. A further delay was made necessary for the logistical preparation of the humanitarian airlift that was launched simultaneously with the air strikes. In the first wave some 37 000 packages of food blankets and medicine were being parachuted over the Afghan countryside together with leaflets in local languages explaining the allied cause. The effort will continue alongside the missile and bombing strikes through the next week and beyond it. This is the most extraordinary part of the adventure. For the U.S. and Britain are determined to demonstrate a willingness to risk casualties to give aid to the desperate Afghan people even under fire. If I'm not mistaken a co-ordinated launch of military and humanitarian missions on this scale is a novelty in the history of warfare. The tactical purpose of this humanitarianism is more subtle than first appears. In their help to the Afghan mujahedin against the Soviets in the 1980s the Americans acquired a reputation for avoiding personal risks. They must prove to their Afghan allies now that they are "man enough" to undertake such missions. But I don't think the wave of strikes that began after noon yesterday were in their military dimension more than a toe in the water. Or more precisely a brick into the hive to see where the bees will fly. They were modest compared to the initial strikes against Iraq in 1991. For the underlying purpose of this stage in the "war on terrorism" is still reconnaissance. The strike itself is an act of reconnaissance on several complex levels and it required the extra weeks to put into place. But neither could it wait any longer. The U.S. and Britain were seeking answers to at least three urgent questions that could not be asked politely. How committed are their allies? What is the mood throughout the Muslim world? What is the terrorist plan of action? Immediate answers can now be given to the first two questions. From Canada to Russia from France to Turkey in Central Asia and Pakistan U.S. allies were unqualified in their statements of support for the military action. The verbiage was undergirded in almost every case by material promises to aid in future campaigns. Most of these were responses to specific requests that had been made by the Bush administration on Friday (an exquisite example of the skill of present U.S. diplomatic choreography). And the reactions to the strike in Pakistan Egypt Saudi Arabia and elsewhere -- even in Gaza and the West Bank -- was much milder than expected. (One of the reasons for delaying Afghan strikes was to give "moderate" Arab and other Muslim governments an opportunity to round up "the usual suspects" -- the Islamist troublemakers most likely to be organizing demonstrations and riots. For it is a little-known fact that "spontaneous" riots very seldom occur.) The greatest attention has however been focused on the third question: What is the terrorist plan of action? Within Afghanistan itself I suspect some of the answer is intended to come from a satellite launched Friday on a Titan IV rocket from the Vandenberg air base in California. The launch originally scheduled before Sept. 11 was further delayed after by unspecified technical problems possibly the cover for a mission change. The payload belonging to the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office was quite certainly satellite imaging equipment. While the air strikes induce panic reactions on the ground in Afghanistan U.S. intelligence will be pouring over extremely detailed images of many locations many of them scouted on the ground in the last few weeks. More information can usually be gathered in the first hours after a hit than in months of careful stalking. It is also the ideal moment to intercept uncoded and indiscreet enemy communications. By comparison the chances of knocking out Afghan air defences with a few quick blows were rather slighter. Most of these consist of Soviet-era radar-guided ZSU-22 and ZSU-23 guns which can be moved around quickly and are easy to hide. The possibilities for high technology in the present war effort are probably underestimated. It has been a long decade since the Gulf War and all the intelligence lessons learned there. We armchair generals are about to review the latest weapons which I expect will include interesting devices for penetrating caves. But the most important intelligence work being done at this moment is not in Afghanistan at all but across North America and Europe. For the more immediate enemies the allies must flush out are neither Al Qaeda trainees nor Taliban soldiers. In intelligence briefings to the Senate last week the Bush administration estimated a 100 per cent likelihood of large scale follow-up attacks to those of Sept. 11 on New York and Washington. We know they will be attempted. Almost certainly at least one will be attempted in the U.S. and another in Europe in the coming days. It was interesting to see a NATO announcement of the deployment of AWAC surveillance aircraft over the U.S. itself just before the attack began in Afghanistan. Throughout the Western world security forces and police are now operating at the highest possible level of vigilance. They can only hope to have made the right arrests. May God protect us. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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