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COMMENTARY
November 10, 2001
Mazar breakthrough
Forces from three Northern Alliance factions loosely under the command of Rashid Dostum its former Uzbek warlord would seem to have entered Mazar-i-Sharif yesterday and to be taking the city neighbourhood by neighbourhood. The Northern Alliance in fact claimed the city had fallen outright but at the time of writing this could not be confirmed. The claims have been made principally by Gen. Dostum himself and by the Alliance spokesman Ashraf Nadeem. The former speaking on a satellite phone from a hill position outside the city is a notorious windbag. All factions on both sides of the Afghan conflict have histories of making inflated and uncheckable claims but it was instructive that the Taliban itself confessed its forces were "regrouping outside the city" in a statement made through the Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press. Other Taliban sources were silent. The most plausible and complete account I have seen came from a Tadzhik faction operating in the vicinity (Shia Muslims in the pay of the government of Iran). It was that Alliance forces benefiting from fresh saturation bombing by the U.S. of the Taliban's forward positions suddenly struck into the city from the south and east quickly taking the main southern bridge and the larger of the city's two airports. Gunfire could be heard from several locations within the city and at least some of the Taliban soldiers seemed to be fleeing east towards Kholm and the spectacular gorge of Tashqurghan the route they would take if they intended to make Kabul. (Once through the gorge they will find themselves in a Northern Alliance shooting gallery.) But these troops originated from positions already outside the city. Horses have been used in the Alliance charge. Notwithstanding mockery in the Western press horses are the ideal "vehicles" to effect speed and surprise in such a battle theatre. Tanks on both sides are for the most part hunkered into fixed positions; very few are still mobile and they are cumbersome to aim. A Taliban retreat west along the broken roads and tracks towards Herat would make even less sense and their forces within Mazar have really nowhere to go. Their only remaining bet would be to dash in small groups for the villages they still hold chiefly to the west of the city. They can then try to hold villagers hostage against U.S. air attacks and mount guerrilla reprisals from these scattered positions. The Mazar or Balkh region is Afghanistan's bread basket so far as the country has such a thing. It has foliage and cover not quite the exposed "lunar" landscape that is encountered elsewhere. But with its Persian and Turkic culture it offers the Pashtun Taliban and its chiefly Arab and Pakistani terrorist allies no natural friends. On the contrary it is the friendliest available environment to assemble ground U.S. forces with a surrounding population well disposed to U.S. war aims prepared to be helpful in ferreting out the common enemy. Within the city itself I would not expect resistance to last long. The Taliban have generally proved allergic to urban fighting in the past although the tactical possibilities ought to be enormous in some of Mazar's winding streets and bazaar district. The Americans have done to my understanding very little bombing within the city itself owing not only to the paucity of legitimate military targets but a fear of alienating the people. Moreover as a potential gateway to both military and civilian relief supplies from Uzbekistan (the border is just 65 kilometres to the north across low and fairly even terrain) they wanted it captured with the minimum of damage. The city's last three turnovers to the Taliban in 1997 then back to the Alliance then to the Taliban again in 1998 were comparatively quick and clean; except that the last was followed by an extraordinary grudge massacre of several thousand of the city's civilian inhabitants. There are therefore more buildings still standing in the city than almost anywhere else in Afghanistan providing shelter to snipers. (Rubble does not offer such cover given U.S. freedom to fire rockets from above.) Whether the city has fallen or is still in the act of falling it is wonderful news for the U.S. and its allies. It should soon be possible to put both of the city's airports to use providing a much-needed dry-ground platform for air operations within Afghanistan itself. U.S. air strikes are now coming chiefly from carriers far away in the Arabian Sea. These airports would cut response times for air sorties from hours to minutes while considerably increasing the traffic capacity and the array of aircraft to be used. It would leave the U.S. less dependent on the goodwill and winking of the unpleasant dictatorship in Tadzhikistan (which has made three ex-Soviet airbases available for relief flights and emergencies). But as important a road is now opening for overland supply of food fuel and medicine from Uzbekistan. Mazar gives access to the whole Afghan north and provides a destination for starving refugees fleeing from the central mountains and elsewhere. Here is an opportunity to show the Muslim world what American generosity looks like now that it has had a chance to review U.S. air power. The pressure to take Kabul and then Jalalabad as well in the coming weeks before the worst of winter has arrived will now be increasing. This would incidentally open a corridor for relief supplies from the Pakistani frontier though an awkward one in winter. Paradoxically it will also increase the demand for the insertion of U.S. and allied ground troops for if Kabul falls the road will be opened south towards Ghazni and the Taliban's seat in Kandahar. Both are at much lower elevations so that winter is much less of an obstacle to carrying forward. But the allies will be digging deeper into Pashtun territory with an ill-trained and already overstretched non-Pashtun ground contingent which could be put to better use (and inspired by reward money) scouring more northern valleys in pursuit of Al Qaeda. It is the road south from Kabul that may prove the hard part. The U.S. with some help from its European allies would now seem to be assembling infantry in the region for such a mission in the hope of completing the rout. But for this fight beyond Kabul they will find themselves without many Afghan friends having to fall back on very lethal firepower to clear the way. And the "optics" on this mission will not be very good: it will look less like Yankees plus Afghan friends v. Taliban and more like Yankees v. Afghans. So it is downhill today then back uphill tomorrow. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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