From the CIAO Atlas Map of Middle East 

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CIAO DATE: 10/01

Afghanistan — War Aims

In Perspective©
The Oxford Analytica Weekly Column
October 9, 2001

Oxford Analytica

This piece focuses on the obstacles facing the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan. In order to defend the United States and its allies against further terrorist attacks, the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan seeks to destroy Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organisation and topple the Taliban regime which hosts it. However, significant obstacles stand in the way of victory.

Washington appears to have embarked upon a long-term simultaneous military, political, diplomatic and economic strategy to achieve its objectives in Afghanistan. However, given the absence of any credible pan-Afghan leaders and the deleterious effects of more than two decades of internecine warfare, this approach carries high risks. They include even greater political fragmentation of the country, continued war and possible regional destabilisation.

The US administration has decided that the scale and destructiveness of the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York require a deadly and decisive response. However, this response, the 'visible' military phase of which began on October 7, presents the United States with possibly the most difficult political-military challenge that it has faced since the Second World War. The ethnic, political, geographical and ideological complexity of Afghanistan has humbled successive foreign invaders. Nevertheless, US President George Bush considers the pursuit of bin Laden to be a matter of necessity. His administration also believes that a campaign against the Taliban regime is vital to demonstrate that hosting international terrorists threatens a regime's survival. Despite this strong motivation, it is by no means clear that the United States, for all its power and military reach, can achieve these objectives.

Formidable obstacles. The US military faces several key obstacles:

  1. Geography. Afghanistan has some of the world's most rugged terrain and challenging weather conditions. Because of the height of the mountains and the narrowness of the valleys, many helicopters deployed by the Soviet Union during its occupation (1979-1989) were shot down from above by Mujahideen guerrillas armed with unsophisticated weapons. Even if US forces do not face the same kind of ferocity that greeted the Soviets, the climate and terrain will tax the ability of the US troops to maintain mobility for all but the most self-contained elite units.
  2. Broken society. The country's ethnic, tribal, linguistic and ideological divisions are intense and intractable. Ever since Mohammad Daoud toppled the monarchy in 1973, the loose social compact that allowed the country's Pathan majority (38%) and Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other minority groups to live in mutual toleration has broken down. This accommodation was destroyed by the Soviet intervention on the side of the Afghan communists, who were largely urbanised de-tribalised Pathans, along with a few notable ethnic minority supporters such as the current leader of the Uzbek wing of the anti-Taliban United Front, General Rashid Dostum.

    The subsequent anti-Soviet guerrilla war was carried on by a diverse mix of ethnic and tribal leaders and local commanders. However, even when the Soviet offensive was at its most effective, none of these factions was able to cooperate effectively. Furthermore, many Pathans based in the southern city of Kandahar who had provided the main support to the Daoud regime were largely absent from the fight — sitting out the anti-Soviet war in Pakistani camps, only to re-emerge in 1993 as the military and ideological core of the Taliban.

  3. Taliban alternatives. The United States and its European allies are keen to promote a provisional regime to replace the Taliban, possibly under the nominal leadership of the former king, Zahir Shah. However, this concept was first developed towards the end of the anti-Soviet campaign. Now, as then, it is problematic:

  4. Zahir Shah is 86-years-old and has neither the personal leadership qualities nor the necessary degree of respect inside the country to assume the role of figurehead in a post-Taliban regime.
  5. Current western diplomatic expectations that 'traditionalist' Afghans and their leaders view the king as a unifying force are reminiscent of the hopes that once were placed in the 'moderate' groups of the anti-Soviet war era, who were unrepresentative of broader Pathan society, and who seldom achieved notable success on the battlefield.
  6. Western expectations that some form of pan-ethnic Loya Jirga — a grand assembly of tribal leaders and other notables possibly led by the king — can form the basis of a successor national government appear to be misguided. The Loya Jirga concept was discussed during a recent mission to the King, now resident in Rome, by members of the United Front — a broad coalition of mainly non-Pathan anti-Taliban fighters. However, the Loya Jirga concept is a wholly Pathan tradition and is rejected by many of the country's ethnic minorities. Furthermore, it is likely that several of the powerful Pathan warlords prominent in the anti-Soviet campaign who are now eager to attack the Taliban from the south would reject a return to a traditionalist form of government.
  7. Pakistan factor. Pakistan maintains diplomatic relations with the Taliban, but in recent weeks has sought to distance itself from a group it once trained and funded. President Pervez Musharraf has declared his support for the US campaign. However, Islamabad maintains two enduring objectives that it will not willingly abandon:

    • Anti-irredentism. It will seek to cultivate those Pathan forces in Afghanistan that reject a long-held Pathan irredentist claim to Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province where the Pathan form the largest ethnic group. To this end, Islamabad has cultivated Pathan groups that are motivated by radical Islam rather than Pathan nationalism. It did this first by backing the fundamentalist warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, both before and during the Soviet occupation; and thereafter by supporting the Taliban. Pakistan is also keen to prevent Afghanistan breaking up along ethnic lines. Such a development would generate pressures for a new pan-Pathan state.
    • Anti-encirclement. Islamabad will do everything in its power to counter what it perceives as India's desire to 'encircle' Pakistan by cultivating such groups as the opposition United Front in Afghanistan. It has said it will not tolerate a United Front government in Kabul and has warned the United States not to try to impose one.

Limited options. These obstacles severely limit US military and political options in its Afghanistan campaign:

  1. 'Surgical strikes'. Since the visible phase of the US 'war on terrorism' began on October 7, it has taken the form of targeted missile and air strikes against the Taliban's limited military infrastructure. Were this to be the only component of a short campaign, it would assuage fears in many Muslim states that Washington has embarked on a war against Islam. However, this strategy would not achieve the objective of either the collapse of the Taliban or the destruction of the al-Qaida network. Instead, it would probably embolden both.
  2. Special forces insertion. The current air attacks may be preparing the ground for a 'snatch and grab' operation by special forces to apprehend or kill Osama bin Laden, perhaps in the context of a Taliban 'implosion'. While this might bring the US campaign to a dramatic conclusion, such a strategy, given the terrain, would require considerable luck to succeed. Moreover, it would not necessarily address the longer-term requirement of ending Afghanistan's role as host to international terrorist forces.
  3. Multifaceted campaign. US planners are likely to opt for an ambitious and long-term strategy that consists of aligning with anti-Taliban forces to topple the Taliban regime, thereby exposing bin Laden to attack. A simultaneous aim would be to construct a new, more moderate pan-Afghan government. This will require simultaneous military, political, diplomatic and economic action. This option relies heavily on providing support to the United Front, the only functioning military opposition to the Taliban inside the country, including air attacks designed to assist their operations on the ground in the hope that they can isolate the Taliban inside major centres such as Herat and Kabul before winter sets in about four weeks time.

    If reports are correct that bin Laden's several thousand-strong forces are closely integrated with those of the Taliban, it will be very difficult to find, fix, and successfully attack him without securing the collapse of the Taliban. However, winter and its heavy snows might work to the advantage of US forces if bin Laden's location can be established, making him vulnerable to large-scale air assault in conditions where he cannot be reinforced. The mobilisation of a US Army mountain warfare division suggests that planners may be thinking along these lines. Short of this outcome, a major campaign against the Taliban and bin Laden would not take place until spring which does not arrive until late April.

A major constraint to a US ground offensive is the current absence of any credible anti-Taliban forces in the Pathan heartland around Kandahar and southern Afghanistan. Moreover, US forces themselves would have great difficulty conducting operations in southern Afghanistan without using bases in Pakistan. Given the significant support for the Taliban both on the streets of Pakistan and within sections of the military, the Musharraf regime is unlikely to accede to this.

Risk factors. The above strategy, if pursued, is replete with dangers: