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DEVELOPMENTS demonstrate that the resumed active operations in Afghanistan have failed to bring about a decisive turning point in the war for either side. The NATO coalition forces and the Afghan army didn't let the Taliban take over the initiative or stage even a single serious operation. They also managed to eliminate several influential field commanders. At the same time, Taliban groups have retained their combat potential and continue delivering harassing strikes at most unexpected locations. Suffice it to mention the insurgent attack on April 27 of this year during a military parade in Kabul. It is a stalemate. The time works for the Taliban, while the allies have to modify their strategy.

Two Fronts of the Coalition

THE INTERNATIONAL Security Assistance Force (ISAF) boasts troops from 39 nations (26 of them NATO members) totaling almost 53,000. Yet, only U.S., British, Canadian and Dutch units are deployed in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the real war is in progress. Other national contingents are stationed in western and northern areas in order to assist "reconstruction and stabilization."
America's appeals to its principal allies - Germany, Italy and Spain - for changes in this state of affairs usually elicit the reply that their mandates in Afghanistan authorize them to take part in active warfare only in an extreme necessity. They are, in the first place, participants in the humanitarian, not counter-terrorist or anti-guerilla, operation. They don't want any casualties. The European electorate is very sensitive to such losses. Thus, a "two-level" war is taking shape. North Atlantic unity failed to stand the "Afghan test," and NATO's future ability to resist a really strong adversary is more than doubtful.
Its Bucharest summit (April 2008), where Afghanistan topped the agenda, could only induce France to declare that it was sending a battalion (more than 700 officers and men) to the south. This somewhat reassured the Canadian command that was threatening to pull out of the operation unless the allies sent an additional one thousand troops to its zone of responsibility. The 2,500-strong Canadian contingent stationed in Kandahar Province (a Taliban domain) suffered
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Ivan Konovalov, Deputy Director, Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies
84 fatal casualties alone by May of this year. The Netherlands is not going to withdraw entirely (its contingent numbers 1,750), but it is threatening a radical cut-down by August if reinforcements are still withheld. The British, as usual, keep quiet, expecting what will be obtained by the Americans. Their fatal casualties amount to 100, American 510.
The U.S. has the most numerous contingent (32,500), of which approximately 10,000 is not part of the ISAF and is directly controlled by the Central Command in Tampa, Florida. The coalition command structure is on the whole extremely arcane. At the strategic level, it is controlled by the Allied Command Operations at Mons, Belgium; at the operational, the Allied Joint Force Command at Brunssum, The Netherlands.
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes at least 10,000 allied troops must be sent to the southern zone. But, as is clear, this is impossible. That is why, the United States, in order to achieve a critical change in the situation, is launching an "Americanization" drive. Aside from a recent airlift of an additional 3,200 Marines, it is planning to re-deploy three brigades (nearly 15,000) from Iraq. The decision is quantitative and its putative qualitative transformation is far from obvious. The Americans feel certain of success, and this certainty is based on the relative successfulness of the "surge strategy" the Multi-National Force Commander Gen. David H. Petraeus used in Iraq. In 2007, a rapid airlift of five brigades in combination with more aggressive tactics employed by the entire U.S. force helped to achieve some important successes. But... First, this didn't stop the war in Iraq; second, the Afghan TO is drastically different from the Iraqi one.

The Afghan Allies

IT'S HARD to hope to be successful without the assistance of a really combat-capable Afghan National Army (ANA). But bringing it to this condition is a difficult and protracted process. Currently the ANA is approximately 55,000-strong and is set to reach the 200,000 mark some time in the future.
As is common knowledge, the Afghans are very good soldiers. But the cohesion within units is low because of their multiethnic composition. There is a chronic dearth of recruits, the desertion is rampant, and the units, as a rule, can only rely on a half of their regular strength. Despite training programs, the shortage of specialists is disastrous. The officer corps is small. The general combat and technical equipment level wouldn't stand to criticism. Suffice it to say that the army only has 24 howitzers (155 mm), a couple of dozens of old Mi-8 choppers, about ten transport planes, and several dozen outmoded T-62 tanks. Earlier the main arms supplies were from the old arsenals of former Soviet bloc countries. It was only recently that the Pentagon announced a $3 billion package of military aid for Afghanistan.
Like other power structures, the army is corrupt and torn apart by interethnic differences. Army units are still unable to pursue large-scale combat operations on their own. There are always foreign troops to support them.
The Afghan police force is experiencing some even greater difficulties. Low equipment level and poor training is only part of the problem. 60% of the country is controlled by local tribes and forces of different warlords. These number a total of 170,000 armed fighters. And they put up with the presence of government power structures in their territory only because there are foreign troops to back them and they have a chance to receive financial and humanitarian aid. The situation recurs time and again. After a territory is "cleansed" of insurgents, it needs to be controlled and it can't, while the disarmament of the local population is downright impossible. If clan-controlled forces clash, not a single foreign command wishes to interfere for fear of breeding enemies.

The Enemy

APART FROM THE TALIBAN, the coalition is opposed by al-Qaeda, the Islamic Party of Afghanistan and a number of smaller Islamic groups. But the main operations are pursued against the Taliban. After its crushing defeat in 2001, the movement fully restored its infrastructure before 2006 by establishing some rear bases in Pakistan's "tribal zone" (Northern and Southern Vaziristan) and North-Western Border Province. Last year the Taliban became so active that the Afghan campaign came to be compared with the Iraqi one in terms of intensity.
Different data put the Taliban strength at between 10 and 20 thousand fighters. Theoretically its combat strength can be subdivided into three categories:
- "old soldiers" that survived the 2001 rout. They are the movement's command personnel;
- the "new Taliban." These are mostly rank and file but there are some mid-level commanders;
- foreign mercenaries (Arabs, Chechens, Uzbeks, Uigurs).
The system that controls the fighting in Afghanistan is based on three command-and-control centers in the Pakistani cities of Quetta, Miranshah, and Peshawar. The zone of responsibility of "Quetta" is in the Afghan provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Uruzhan and partially Farah; "Miranshah," Host, Paktia, and Paktika; "Peshawar," Jelalabad, Kunar, Logar, and Lagman.
Top-level field commanders have deputies who thoroughly reconnoiter the terrain before each operation. On the average, a field commander controls about one hundred fighters who, in turn, are divided into self-sustained groups numbering from five to ten men. They only merge if a major operation is in the offing.
Their weapons are of standard guerilla sort: small arms, grenade launchers, light antitank rocket systems, portable SAM systems, most different mines. Arms shortage is something they don't feel, because the allies are incapable of cutting the Pakistani smuggling channels.

The Campaign

THE TALIBAN'S "spring offensive" showed that they intended to make war on an increasingly broad scale and do this aggressively. But they are doomed to use solely the guerilla tactics. Their enemy's technical superiority is beyond doubt. All their attempts to meet with the allies in an open engagement were always disastrous. They are simply sealed off and annihilated by ground assault planes and helicopter gunships. Major attacks in the "hit-and-run" style are a success but on rare occasions. Large concentrations of insurgents can be easily monitored by ISAF air reconnaissance. More than 6.5 thousand members of different groups (two-thirds of them of the Taliban) died in those engagements.
Musa Kala (Helmand Province) is the only city the Taliban managed to seize during their "spring offensive" in 2007. But it was not a military success. The city was "surrendered" by the British who controlled that zone. According to the official version, they made an agreement with a local council of the elders and handed it over to a tribal militia that was supposed to maintain security. The Taliban turned up immediately and held the city for almost nine months, extending their influence to certain neighboring territories. They could only be dislodged by a four-day operation in December 2007.
The main warfare methods used by the Taliban are attacks on offices of foreign companies and agencies, government establishments, police stations, and humanitarian convoys, fire attacks on small military columns, terrorist attacks in cities, and road mining. The latter accounts for 20% of all allied losses. This percentage is even higher for the Afghan power structures. There is a temptation for the Taliban and other groups to shift the emphasis on mine warfare as a method that proved the most efficient in conditions of total enemy superiority.
A factor that so far helps NATO forces is that, unlike the Iraqi insurgents, who, aside from attacking foreign troops, fight each other and absolutely refuse to spare the civilians, the Taliban seek to operate directly against NATO and allied Afghan forces, and do not stage so many terrorist attacks everywhere. The Taliban leadership are well aware that each bomb blast in a crowded place will excite much anger among the ordinary Afghans and the movement is likely to see shrink its already limited support base. In that country, the clan ties are more important than the state, Islamic, or any other ideology.
This aspect restricts the road mine warfare as well. There are 34 thousand kilometers of roads in Afghanistan, its sole economic arteries. Peaceful Afghans regularly die on account of road mine blasts. A large-scale mining of motor roads will not only entail numerous casualties but will also cause a collapse of the entire inter-city trade system. An Afghan public reaction can be easily imagined.
Early in the 2008 "spring offensive" the Taliban attempted to bring pressure to bear on mobile and cellular communications companies operating in southern and eastern Afghanistan. To intimidate them, they blew up two towers. Acting on the belief that the Americans traced and killed their leaders by their mobile phone signals, they demanded that the companies should stop operation during the night hours. Their views are primitive, but we are speaking about a different thing. This immediately caused indignation among 250,000 users, including, of course, tribal chiefs. The Taliban had to desist.
There was no fundamental change in this year's campaign by comparison with last year's one. NATO and the Afghan army pursue large-scale operations to "cleanse" territories from insurgents. Supported by Afghanistan's National Security Directorate, the allies achieved much success in hunting down members of the Taliban high command. They destroyed or captured not fewer than 30 high-ranking commanders. But the war goes on. And this year's allied losses are one-third higher than in the same period last year. The Taliban quickly come back from Pakistan to the "cleansed" territories. For example, the allies staged an operation in the border county of Garmser during the whole of May. They declared they had achieved final victory on two occasions, and then the fighting resumed again.

The Pakistani Factor

THE U.S. FORCE is being beefed up. The Romanian and New Zealand contingents will be increased as well. Besides, the ISAF forces as a whole are building up their air units, with all the components strengthened. Fighter and ground assault aviation, reconnaissance and attack helicopters, military transport aviation, and, most importantly, reconnaissance and combat drones. Of course, all of this is done not only to aid an offensive in the Afghan TO. No turning point in the war is possible unless Taliban and al-Qaeda rear bases and command-and-control centers in Pakistan are destroyed.
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan is accusing the Pakistani leadership of conniving at the terrorists that are destroying Afghanistan. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan denies the obvious fact of such bases being present in Pakistan's border provinces. He has to lead a double game, supporting the Americans in their "war on terrorism" and at the same time maintaining a truce with the "tribal zone" so as not to explode the situation in his country. His army and police failed to crush the local Islamists and Afghan Taliban forces that had tribal militias on their side. And he had to withdraw much of his 100,000-strong force from the "tribal zone." Musharraf wouldn't have been able to let foreign forces enter Pakistan even if he wanted to. All he could afford was to allow 100 American instructors to train Pakistan's border corps.
But the situation is growing increasingly tense. U.S. generals insist that the Afghan war should not be limited to Afghanistan alone. Its vector is shifting in the direction of Pakistan. Things went as far as allied forces clashing with Pakistani border guards. Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said directly that the ally of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, was preparing a new attack against the United States in Pakistan. For the Americans it is reason enough for an escalation of their military effort. This, however, makes the Afghan impasse even more perilous.