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COMMENTARY
October 23, 2001
Eyes on Kabul
United States air forces are now striking the entrenched Taliban/Al Qaeda front line in the Jamali plain to the north of Kabul. What began Sunday with touchy-feely strikes to sample targets and map anti-aircraft response seemed to be building yesterday towards a fine crescendo. The fact that each new turn in the attack each new layer of activity added begins on a Sunday suggests someone is working with a weekly timetable. Or rather that the U.S. tacticians are clever enough to adopt habits and then will suddenly change them: for this is as the Russians have told us the best way to unnerve an Afghan opponent. It takes only a couple of repeat shots before they think they know what their enemy is up to; it is a deeply conservative mindset not especially hard to surprise. In this case the Taliban assumption was that the U.S. would stick to formal targets in and around Kabul city itself. Taliban soldiers were evacuating the city to take up positions about 30 miles north along their front line against the Northern Alliance not so much to defend against a sudden ground attack from that side but because they guessed it was the safest place to be. They knew that their erstwhile Pakistani allies were pleading with the U.S. not to let the Northern Alliance take Kabul until Pakistani negotiators had had a chance to put a new governing coalition together including Taliban elements. No doubt they had been assured by friends within the Pakistan administration that the effort was happily dragging on. For two weeks the U.S. planes granted sanctuary to them there; according to journalists looking across the plain from behind Alliance positions not one bomb or missile fell in that time except on Kabul's northern air base. And from what I can follow the Taliban were quick to desert positions around there. Moreover until this past weekend the Americans were signalling that they didn't want Kabul to be taken. For if this predominantly Pashtun city fell to the Alliance whose soldiers are mostly Tadhik Uzbek Turkmen and Hazara there would be the usual hell to pay. When the Alliance ruled Kabul prior to 1996 they did so with vicious brutality and endless shoot-outs between their ethnic factions. Once installed again they would be unlikely to agree to their own replacement with any kind of "government of national reconciliation" of the sort European diplomats are trying to broker under Zahir Shah the old Afghan king waiting in Rome. The Alliance fighters are anti-Taliban but more fundamentally they are anti-Pashtun. This is a big problem and the change in the American attack pattern represents an acknowledgement of the problem. For it cuts two ways as I shall try to explain. We are dealing with a mindset and a consequent order of battle that is profoundly non-Western. What has come home to the U.S. commanders in the two-plus weeks since their air war began is that they might as well just blast away. It isn't the Taliban that is not cracking but rather the Pashtun "nation" is holding firm. Quite certainly a majority of the Pashtuns themselves despise the Taliban party and share our own view that they are religious crazies; they might like an opportunity to dispose of them themselves. But from the moment the U.S. attacks the issue becomes rather "us versus them" -- and not Pashtuns against "American imperialists" but rather Pashtuns against the whole visible world. I very much doubt the "average" Pashtun tribesman just now whether in Kabul or Kandahar or a refugee camp near Peshawar or Quetta could find anything to choose between a Yankee and say an Uzbek. Forced to choose he would select the first one in his viewfinder. And you don't defeat these people by winning their hearts and minds. You defeat them by demoralizing them to the point where they cease to offer resistance. This is what the British learned more than a century ago contrary to what we've been hearing from so many amateur historians. You can beat them but it takes a lot of powder and patience; and you have to fight like fellow savages because they don't take prisoners. On the other hand they usually prove allergic to loud noises and bright light. Now to the Western mind this Pashtun tribal loyalty is senseless. A little rational thought should soon convince them to change sides and join the likely victors. We read this assumption into Afghan behaviour but there is nothing there that answers to it. Deliverance from the Taliban is at hand and the Pashtuns are being asked politely if they would agree to participate in the successor government proportional to their numbers as the largest single ethnic group in the country. All they have to do is disavow Mullah Omar and his "foreign legion" under Osama bin Laden -- both of whom they heartily detest. It is a win-win kind of proposition. But instead they can see only the "incoming". The Taliban have been attacked the Taliban are Pashtuns we are Pashtuns therefore we have been attacked. This is the "Afghan syllogism" and no rational argument will ever defeat it. (A timely fistful of money will sometimes defeat it however.) By the weekend two observations had come together in the U.S. mind. First we seem to have found no new friends among the Pashtun tribe. Second an irresistible bombing and strafing target had formed itself to the north of Kabul. Why wait for it to disperse why not strike it while we still can? This front line to the north of Kabul would seem to be essentially in two rows. At the very front are the Taliban's own native Pashtun soldiers. Behind them is the terrorist "foreign legion" -- including the notorious "55 Brigade" consisting largely of Saudi Arabs but also Pakistani and to a lesser extent Chechen Algerian Somali Egyptian and many other recruits from among religious fanatics around the Muslim world. The latter have nowhere plausible to retreat if they are defeated in Afghanistan; the former could at least slink into the shadows. Hence the rear line is the guarantee against the flight of the front one. And it would fly under normal circumstances. The idea of manliness shared by all the Afghan tribes does not involve standing at your station. Glory is never purchased in a defensive fight. I feel genuinely sorry for these people for while they have had years to entrench they have nothing to offer the U.S. tactical bombers the Apaches the Hornets the Tomahawks the bunker busters the AC-130 gunships that spray acres of exploding lead -- except for their rifle-clutching bodies. It is going to be it must be already very grisly. As of Sunday there were probably in excess of 12 000 pro-Taliban soldiers dug in against not more than 3 000 of the Northern Alliance facing them including not more than 1 000 of the latter's battle-hardened elite only recently arrived from over the mountains behind them from the fastness of the Panjshir Valley. I would assume the U.S. air forces will need at least the full week if not longer to melt the enemy down to less than equal size. This appears to be what they are now doing. Can the Northern Alliance take Kabul? More to the point can they do so before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins Nov. 16 by when winter will also have set in too making resupply nearly impossible? Even with the Taliban front line destroyed it would be touch-and-go. The Alliance force down in the Jamali plain is small and even in balmy weather can be reinforced only slowly through the high mountain passes. If the U.S. and allies were determined to take Kabul in the available time they would have to do the resupplying and reinforcing themselves. This would mean committing and concentrating ground special forces that are now disposed as mobile "swat" teams ready to strike targets of opportunity all around the country. It is not an attractive proposition at all instead a way to maximize casualties while minimizing gains. It follows I think that the Americans will aerially pound and chew the Taliban defences accept Russian help in transporting reserve Alliance forces forward (mostly airborne over the mountains from Panjshir) airdrop some extra weaponry for them and wish them lots of luck. And they will pray that the Alliance soldiers behave if they do take Kabul; that they will occupy themselves distributing food and medical aid to the inhabitants instead of settling some very old scores. For even when you have the agreement of their officers on a plan of action as the U.S. has now the front line soldiers are loathe to obey. The Americans will do this because they might as well; not because it is part of some far-seeing plan. It is like a chess game in which you can't see a result and so you play for position. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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