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CIAO DATE: 03/02
Strange Victory: A critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom and the Afghanistan war
Carl Conetta
PDA Research Monograph #6
30 January 2002
The sudden devolution of the Taliban and the lightening ascent of disparate anti-Taliban factions and tribal warlords, which began 10 November, was not anticipated by the architects of Enduring Freedom. This development resulted from: (i) the remarkable synergy of US air power and Northern Alliance ground troops, (ii) the opportunistic strategy of the Northern Alliance, and (iii) the unique structure and strategy of the Taliban.
The Taliban political-military organization — essentially a coalition of local militias built around a sect — was prone to catastrophic collapse when put under extreme pressure. Likewise, the Taliban's precipitous withdrawal from Kabul and retreat to Kandahar reflected the movement's nature. It had never substantially outgrown its regional roots or its religious-charismatic orientation. The Taliban was a spiritual vigilante group that had been "called" into politics and Kabul, but had never managed to settle in either place except as an occupying force. Its spiritual leader, Omar, and its soul remained in Kandahar. Retreating to that place was as much a spiritual tactic as a military one. (See Appendix 3: The rise and fall of the Taliban: a note on their strategy and power.)
The Alliance victory and Taliban collapse profoundly altered the national and regional strategic situation in several ways — none of them auspicious in terms of long-term stability:
These outcomes were largely the result of America's having augmented and unleashed the Northern Alliance — a force over which it had insufficient control. This policy shift indicated the extent to which military expediency had come to dominate US strategic calculation. The Bush administration first sowed the seeds of this problem when it decided in September to pursue ambitious war objectives without giving enough time or attention to political preparation. A reckoning was inevitable.
Once propelled into national power by America's gift of victory, the Northern Alliance set out immediately to prove itself incapable of bringing stability and the rule of law to Afghanistan. The new chieftains wasted no time before beginning to conduct reprisals and vie among themselves for power. With the Taliban gone, the Alliance had lost its unifying rationale. Usually, the relative success in war of each member of a war coalition would have determinate influence on the post-war distribution of authority and spoils. In this case, however, the advances enjoyed by the Northern Alliance had been unearned; so they did not reflect the northern militias' relative strength — not individually or as a group. The final distribution of authority remains to be settled — and the pressing question for Afghanistan is "how?".
The Northern Alliance had four main geographic power bases: (i) the Tajik areas of the northeast, controlled by the Masoud group; (ii) the Uzbek area of the north, centered on Mazar-i-Sharif and controlled by Abdul Rashid Dostum; (iii) the provinces around Herat, in the west — a Pashtun area controlled by the Tajik warlord Ismail Khan; and, (iv) the Hazara area of central Afghanistan, controlled by the Shiite leader Mohammad Karim Khalili. In each case, the individual Northern Alliance militias rushed into their home power bases as the Taliban collapsed. However, none of the militias exercises firm or intensive control over most of the territory they hold. This, too, is indicative of the fact that the extent and rapidity of their recent victory did not reflect their true power.
The potential for future conflict among the militias resides in several factors: (i) none of the areas under their control are nearly so ethnically homogenous as the militias that control them and (ii) there are large zones in which no one exercises clear authority. Already the Uzbek general Abdul Rashid Dostum is contesting with Tajik militias for control of the provinces of Takhar, Konduz and Baghlan. 54 Throughout Afghanistan, north and south, adjustment to the sudden change in the constellation of power has entailed an increase and diffusion of ethno-religious, tribal, and factional conflict. 55 However, the process of change in the Pashtun south has differed from that in the north.
In the Pashtun belt the effect of the Taliban's collapse was to atomize political power and organization, reducing it to its local and tribal components — which put the south at a distinct (although temporary) disadvantage vis a vis the north. When the Taliban fled Pashtun areas they handed power (and cadre) over to secondary religious and tribal leaders. Many of these had been warlords who had come to terms with the Taliban, joining their coalition as junior partners or retiring from political activity. 56 As a consequence of Taliban rule, these leaders and their organizations were relatively weak. A more formidable Pashtun leadership element was the expatriate tribal leaders and former mujahedin whom the Taliban had driven from the country after 1995. With the Taliban's retreat these former leaders and warlords began returning hastily from exile in a competitive drive to re-establish old networks of power. 57 Relative to their northern counterparts, however, these Pashtun leaders also were weak — having been disorganized, separated from their power bases, and denied external support for the past six years. External support for this group is now reviving, with the West focusing on Pashtun royalists and Pakistan focusing on the former mujahedin.
In the north, the Alliance had dissolved into its constituent parts, which began consolidating their influence on a provincial and ethnic basis. In the south, smaller groups within the Pashtun community began competing for local hegemony. This process in the south should be seen as a first step toward reconstituting Pashtun power and filling the gap left by the departing Taliban. Should the relative organizational strength of Pashtuns be restored, Tajik domination of the government might be seriously challenged. Another concern is that an important part of reconstituting Pashtun power in the south and east is the absorption of former Taliban cadre (and even leaders) — and this puts some Pashtun communities at odds with US policy on the disposition of former Taliban members.
4.2 Regional winners and losers
The greatest benefit of the US military efforts accrued to the Uzbek and, especially, Tajik military factions within the Northern Alliance, under the command of Abdul Rashid Dostum and Mohammad Qaseem Fahim, respectively. Although competitors, these militias share two things: Russian sponsorship and an antipathy toward the West. 58 Their advance is Russia's as well. The rapid takeover of Kabul against US wishes by the Tajik forces was reminiscent of the Russian drive on Pristina at the close of the Kosovo war. Russia moved quickly to consolidate its gain, setting up a temporary mission and flying 12 cargo planes filled with humanitarian supplies into Bagram airport on November 26 — which is more than the United Nations was able to manage. 59 Along with the humanitarian supplies have come several hundred armed Russian personnel, at least.
India, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan also benefitted significantly from the advance of the Northern Alliance. Pakistan's interests, by contrast, were almost entirely displaced. The Pakistan-supported Peshawar Convention won only 10 percent of the positions in the new government. For Iran, the outcome was mixed. Like Pakistan, it is not happy with the increased role of Russians in Afghanistan, nor is it happy with the prominence of royalists in the new government. The specific Afghan leaders and factions supported by Iran — some belonging to the Northern Alliance and some belonging to the "Cyprus group" — constituted a chorus of dissent from the agreement reached in Bonn. 60 While welcoming the outcome in Afghanistan and Bonn, the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, also noted "weaknesses" in the Bonn agreement, warned against "illusions", and predicted that "Afghanistan is facing grave hurdles ahead." 61
Afghanistan looms large in the security calculations of both Pakistan and Iran, and both are likely to work energetically to "re-balance" the distribution of power there. 62 To their advantage they share close cultural and institutional ties with 57 percent of the population. And 65 percent of Afghanistan's border abut either Pakistan or Iran. Since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom the two countries have been more closely coordinating their policies on Afghanistan. They presently maintain a joint committee on the post-war development of Afghanistan.
4.3 The structure of post-war Afghan instability
The potential for instability in post-Taliban Afghanistan resides in three systemic features of the new strategic environment:
These features of post-Taliban Afghanistan imply a significant potential for internecine conflict, including terrorist activity. Two steps that might have mitigated this potential were (i) the early formation of a well-balanced government of national unity and (ii) the early deployment of a large-contingent of peacekeepers to support it. The aim would have been to shunt conflict into a non-military — ie. political — process. Although the 2001 Bonn meeting produced both a new government and a peacekeeping force for Afghanistan, neither of these really fill the bill, for several reasons.
4.3.1 The Bonn agreement: nation-building or "cut and paste"?
The successful formation of a new Afghan government in Bonn was a great relief to US, UK, and UN leaders — coming as it did more than three weeks after the surrender of Kabul and just one day before the final route of the Taliban in Kandahar. But the agreement generated substantial dissent among many Afghan leaders who had spent the previous month consolidating new positions of power throughout the country. (See Appendix 4: The limits of the Bonn agreement and the challenges facing the interim Afghan government.)
The interim government fashioned in Bonn essentially reflected a compromise between the predominant Tajik interests — who gained the powerful defense, interior, and foreign ministries — and those of Prime Minister Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun royalist. 63 But neither Karzai nor the other (much weaker) Pashtun members of the administration can reliably command the loyalty of all the Pashtun factions — not even all the decidedly anti-Taliban ones.
Karzai lacks significant military power that he can reliably call his own. (The final defeat of the Taliban in the south was mostly due to the action of US air power and the ground forces of Gul Agha Shirzai, the former and now restored mujahedin boss of Kandahar.) Karzai is dependent militarily on US forces, whose continuing operations in Pashtun areas — especially bombing runs — have been a divisive, not a unifying factor there. So there is tension between Karzai's source of military power and his need to build his ethnic political base. And this weakens his position vis a vis the other interests represented in the government.
Karzai's relative weakness parallels that of the interim government. It is dependent on the ethnic and warlord militias allied with it — most of whom are not entirely reliable. At present there are in Afghanistan at least six centers or clusters of indigenous military power beyond the reliable control of the government. The principal power clusters in Afghanistan are:
The diffuse character of military power in post-Taliban Afghanistan constitutes a substantial limitation on the government's effective authority. Of course, the Karzai government can call on US support whenever it needs it. But US priorities are not identical to those of the interim government (a point further addressed below). Principally, the United States is engaged in a punitive expedition and a manhunt, not a nation-building exercise.
The long-term stability of Afghanistan, the authority of its government, the relief of its humanitarian crisis, and the country's prospects for reconstruction and recovery all depend on reversing the decentralization of military power and beginning a process of factional disarmament. Until these things occur, the rule of the Kalashnikov will remain alive.
4.3.2 Peacekeepers for Afghanistan: too little, too late
Under pressure, delegates to the Bonn meeting agreed to deployment of an International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan. A military technical agreement was signed by the new government on 6 January 2002. But the agreed force is too small (4,500 troops) to accomplish the necessary stability tasks — and it comes too late: it is supposed to fully deploy to five Afghan cities by mid-January 2002.
64
Peacekeepers could have played an essential role much earlier — as early as when Afghan cities began to fall to the Northern Alliance in mid-November. And, indeed, the British were ready to deploy several thousand troops in mid-November.
65
Deployment of a large, outside stability force could have substantially mitigated the challenges faced by the interim government, dampened the potential for internecine violence, and facilitated humanitarian relief efforts. Such a force might also have served to support disarmament efforts and train a new national army. Minimally adequate performance of these missions would require a contingent of at least 30,000 high-quality troops — assuming substantial support from neighboring countries and Afghan government forces. 66 Peacekeeping troops might be divided among the major cities and cross-road towns, boundaries between ethnic militias (as needed), humanitarian crisis areas, and militia liaison units. A portion of these forces might also be set apart as a rapid reaction component — a job best left to US military units and air power.
Opposition to either a large or early-deploying peacekeeping force came from two quarters:
The best option for early deployment of peacekeepers would have been to have several thousand US ground troops seize key objectives alongside the Northern Alliance as it moved forward — while it was still dependent on US air support and before it could assert a dominant political position. This insertion of US forces would have been the driving wedge for a larger, mostly Muslim peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance force that could have begun supplementing or supplanting US units almost immediately. The near-term task of these forces would have been to secure humanitarian relief efforts, take control of prisoners, and assist the militias in maintaining order — especially to the benefit of refugees and internally displaced persons. Of course, this "best option" (or anything like it) would have implied a different mission definition for Operation Enduring Freedom — one in which stability and humanitarian goals held a more prominent position. Clearly, it also would have required more preparation.
4.4 A new game: US and Afghan interests diverge
The collapse of the Taliban dramatically altered the context and meaning of Operation Enduring Freedom. 70 Inside Afghanistan, the military priorities of the United States and those of its indigenous allies began to diverge in critical ways:
In the Pashtun areas especially, Afghan militias took a much more liberal attitude toward the disposition of captured Taliban (including top leaders) than the United States demanded. For the anti-Taliban Pashtun groups, the reason for pursuing the Taliban and their leaders was to force their re-alignment or retirement — not to punish, imprison, or neutralize them en masse. In this there was a recognition that adopting an overly punitive posture might spark a protracted tribal conflict and detract from the rehabilitation of Pashtun power. (Notably, top Taliban leaders are also the clan leaders of the Ghilzai tribe — the principal tribal competitor to the Durrani from which the prime minister and the king both come.)
At the national level, Afghan leaders responded to the Taliban surrender of power by shifting their emphasis to the goals of conflict limitation, reconciliation, and reconstruction. The new Afghan leadership also supported the capture and imprisonment of remaining Al Qaeda leaders and cadre — but not with the single-mindedness exhibited by the United States. Instead, they gave priority to the tasks of building government legitimacy, averting communal violence, and relieving the nation's humanitarian crisis. And no Afghan leader at any level — national or local — demonstrated a willingness to risk much political, human, or material capital in efforts that did not conform with local post-war imperatives.
Increasingly, Afghan cooperation with America's terminal war objectives became partial or irresolute, and it was accompanied by complaint and manipulation. This is less true at the national than at the provincial or local level — but most of the effective power in Afghanistan resides at the subnational level. Examples of the recent problems include:
Behind the post-Taliban divergence of priorities among the allies is the reality that the US-Afghan coalition has been rife with differences from the start. Efforts converged, however, when the United States decided in late-October to throw its support more fully behind the Northern Alliance. This convergence facilitated the Taliban's defeat, gave Afghanistan to its present rulers, and won for the United States greater freedom to pursue bin Laden throughout the land. But the close parallel of US-Afghani efforts ended with the Taliban's defeat. Since then the United States has been increasingly on its own, pursuing its terminal objectives with a ferocity that impacts some part of Afghanistan every day, but that bears little positive relationship to what Afghanistan's new rulers view as their most pressing problems.
4.4.1 A failure to adjust
The divergence of priorities within the US-Afghan coalition has been especially disruptive to the US campaign because it was premised on close cooperation between US and Afghan forces. More than cooperation, the effort required a degree of dependency on unfamiliar local fighters that set it apart from any of America's recent wars, including Vietnam. This dependency virtually guaranteed that, should priorities diverge, US mission capabilities would be seriously compromised. The problem lies not with the concept of "cooperation", per se, but rather with the expectation that a strong basis for cooperation, trust, and joint operations can be established overnight.
The change in strategic circumstances that followed the Taliban's demise challenged Operation Enduring Freedom in other ways as well. With the collapse of the regime, the immediate mission of US forces changed, exposing weaknesses in America's operational concept. The combination of US air power and thousands of mediocre allied militia (supplemented by US SOF units) had been sufficient to drive the Taliban from the field and from government. But the combination was much less effective in capturing or killing the 50 or 60 specific individuals on the Pentagon's "most wanted" list and also less effective in interdicting the majority of Al Qaeda cadre, once they had dispersed.
Toppling a regime is very different than interdicting small bands of guerilla fighters — especially if the goal in the latter case is to get them all. Defeating large units who are attempting a positional defense is also quite different than capturing individual leaders who have gone underground or "taken to the hills." Notably, a nation's field army can be shattered if even less than ten percent of its members are quickly killed. In the hunt for Al Qaeda, however, a ten percent interdiction rate would not qualify as success.
Two parts of the OEF force mix — local militia and aerial bombardment — were wrong for the terminal phase of the war. Local militia posed problems not only of will and intent, as noted above, but of capability as well. They were not sufficiently agile, disciplined, or coordinated to effectively trap or fix small enemy groups when the latter refused combat.
As for aerial bombardment: it proved too blunt an instrument for interdicting small numbers of enemy personnel on the run. Often these were mixed too closely with civilians for this type of attack. And, as noted above, the quality of the local intelligence that provided bombing targets deteriorated when ethnic rivalries flared in the Taliban aftermath. As a result, the ratio of enemy to civilian casualties during the post-Taliban phase of the war may have been one-to-one. 75 This damaged the legitimacy of the new government at a critical time and caused friction both within the government and between it and the United States.
What was needed in the terminal phase of Operation Enduring Freedom was a greater emphasis on US special operations troops, elite and light infantry, and air assault units in the primary combat role. In pivotal operations, most local militia should have been relegated to secondary missions and supporting roles — public affairs among them. And aerial bombardment should have become a rare thing. Several of the controversial attacks in which dozens of civilians were killed — for instance, the late-December bombings of a convoy in Paktia province and the village of Qalaye Niazi — would have been better handled by US special and elite troops.
The failure to adjust US operations in line with the post-Taliban change in theater conditions cost the United States some of the fruits of victory and imposed additional, avoidable humanitarian and stability costs on Afghanistan. Why the United States failed to adjust is unclear, but several possible explanations are reasonable: The Administration may simply have failed to notice that strategic conditions had changed, or it may have failed to appreciate the significance of these changes. More likely, it was deterred from making more use of US troops by the prospect of increased US casualties that this would entail. America's acute post-cold war sensitivity to combat casualties may still prevail, 11 September notwithstanding.
5. The Tunnel at the End of the Light
5.1 The path charted by Enduring Freedom
The clearest achievement of Operation Enduring Freedom was forcing the Taliban from power. But this goal was secondary to the one of destroying the Al Qaeda network, which is down but not out. And, despite the change of government in Kabul, Afghanistan is less stable today than before the operation.
At the regional level, one factor of instability — the Taliban-Al Qaeda nexus — has been displaced by another potentially more serious one: regional interstate contention over the direction of an unsettled Afghanistan. The war also left Pakistan and its president in a precarious position and it contributed to a dangerous escalation of the conflicts in the Mideast and Kashmir. Finally, the operation — especially the bombing campaign and the post-war treatment of prisoners — has fed anti-American sentiments throughout the Arab and Muslim world. 76 For many observers there, the various effects of the campaign easily combine to give the impression that the war is precisely what the Bush administration says it is not: an assault on Arab and Muslim interests. 77
In sum: for a counter-terrorism operation, Enduring Freedom left an enormous strategic wake. Indeed, its inadvertent effects over-shadow its intended ones.
Instead of stability, Enduring Freedom has produced residual management tasks of uncertain proportion. The Bush administration now proposes to handle these through a substantial additional investment of strategic capital — notably, an expansion of overt military presence, assistance, and activism in central and south Asia. 78 This is what US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has in mind when he promises that the United States will not again forget about the countries in these regions. Prime Minister Karzai and presidents Musharraf and Islam Karimov may see billions in this pledge; Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz sees bases.
While US influence in Central Asia has been quietly growing for years, the post-OEF expansion of its military aspect will make it a more contentious issue for Russia and China — not to mention for the region's Islamicist movements. 79 There is an irony in this that will be lost on the bin Ladens of the world: their jihad against US military influence in Muslim areas has prompted an expansion of precisely the thing that aggravates them. But we should not expect this outcome to deter them from continuing as before. They are as immune to deterrence as they are to irony.
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has signaled a willingness to deploy to another 15 countries in pursuit of terrorists. 80 But the method and path charted by Enduring Freedom would lead the United States into a thicket of civil, ethnic, and interstate conflicts involving much more than the issue of terrorism (as is already the case in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Israel). In such complex circumstances, the single-minded exercise of US military power is bound to produce inadvertent and chaotic results. Moreover, it will implicate the United States as a partisan in local disputes in ways not originally intended.
The United States will not likely meet a foe that it cannot beat in war for some time. But other nations will seek increasingly to balance against a more activist US military in order to retain their own regional influence. In the meantime, the Enduring Freedom model will pose a problem of strategic over-extension for the United States. The rudiments of this problem are already evident in plans to substantially boost defense spending despite two years of projected budget deficits and a sharp decline in expected future budget surpluses. The 2003 defense budget has been set at $379 billion. This sum represents a 30 percent inflation-corrected increase over the 1998 budget and it is 93 percent as high as average spending during the cold war decade of the 1980s. Additional real increases in defense spending are likely during the decade. However, the projected budget surplus for the next ten years has declined 71 percent since last year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 81
Enduring Freedom was also distinguished by the degree to which military expediency determined strategic choices — such as the decision to unleash the Northern Alliance. This feature of US decision-making in the war contributed to the preponderance of inadvertent and unplanned outcomes. The US relationship with the Northern Alliance was governed by a mutual opportunism whose operating principle was: "the enemy of my enemy is potentially useful to me." Tactical alliances are not unusual in war, of course. But the degree of US dependency in this case, and the differences in the broader goals, interests, and values that separated the United States and its battlefield partners ensured that the American victory would be neither tidy nor complete.
More than an aberration, ad hoc reliance on disparate local partners has been heralded as an essential feature of the "new warfare". Like most aspects of the method of war demonstrated in Afghanistan, this is not entirely new; it finds a precedent in American cooperation with the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1999 Operation Allied Force. In the Afghanistan case, however, the governor came off. This calls to mind an even earlier precedent for the use of local forces: US cooperation with the Afghan mujahedin during the late-1970s and 1980s. So in some respects US policy has come full circle. Of course, now there is a determination to remain engaged and police the results of such cooperation. As suggested above, however, this solution involves negative consequences of its own.
The decision to unleash the Northern Alliance came during the second week of the war. Some analysts have detected in this decision the resolution of a debate within the administration that had pitted the views of the State Department against those of Defense. 82 At heart, the disagreement regarded the importance of providing for post-war political arrangements in Afghanistan, safe-guarding against negative stability effects, and attending to the strategic concerns of alliance partners, especially Pakistan and other Muslim countries. DoD was more prepared than State to unleash the Northern Alliance and less inclined to invest in splitting the Taliban. DoD also was reluctant to pace the bombing campaign to meet what the State Department regarded as political requirements. The turning point in the war supposedly came with the ascendancy of DoD's view, which reframed the rout of the Taliban as a rather simple matter.
The purported tussle between State and Defense has the feel of a familiar old tale and it may be true — but what should we make of it? The facile conclusion is that political and diplomatic considerations had dominated military ones unnecessarily during the campaign's first month, thus hobbling the war effort. However, if we take a longer perspective on the war, something like the opposite appears true: The rush into an unnecessarily ambitious and complex operation so soon after 11 September made adequate political preparation impossible — and this bred the operation's short-comings.
The historiography of the war holds that the Bush administration demonstrated judiciousness and restraint in waiting 25 days before responding militarily to the 11 September attacks. This would certainly be true if the action in question had been a limited one. By historical standards, however, three-and-half weeks is not a long time to pause before initiating a large-scale military campaign in a highly volatile region bordering Russia and China. Although it was necessary to take prompt, forceful action against the Al Qaeda network, it was not necessary to rush a regime change in Afghanistan. Nor, as it turns out, was it possible to do so without sacrificing important stability, alliance, and humanitarian interests. The two tasks — destroying Al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan — although related, should and could have been pursued in parallel, each within its own appropriate time line.
While it is fair to say that alliance and stability concerns initially constrained the conduct of the war, they did so from an already subordinated position — a position of trying to catch up to the war wagon and steer it toward a more balanced set of objectives. This proved an impossible task. Battlefield imperatives and broader strategic concerns could not be sufficiently reconciled within the chosen time frame. The results of this dilemma were evident both before and after the war's mid-November turning point. It was evident before 10 November in the desultory progress of the operation. And it was evident afterward in a sudden "come-back" victory achieved by jettisoning important interests and stability concerns — an act of simplification that later rebounded to haunt America's victory.
More important than the differences between State and Defense is the policy framework in which both operate. The conceptual apparatus that the Bush administration brings to the current crisis combines a naive Realism and a sturdy faith in the utility of military power as a political solvent. 83
Consistent with the administration's policy framework is a reduced emphasis on "humanitarian interests," international legal mechanisms, stability issues and operations (including peacekeeping), and attempts at nation-building. Especially relevant to Operation Enduring Freedom, the administration has placed a renewed emphasis on the role of states in supporting terrorism and a new emphasis on "regime removal" as a sanction for rogue behavior. 84
From the administration's security policy perspective the problem of terrorism admits a fairly straight-forward solution: one simply acts as quickly and decisively as one's power allows to remove the offending actors and those governments that consort with or tolerate them. The broader aim is to "drain the swamp" (of bad actors) and deter future flooding. Within this framework the possible negative and inadvertent repercussions of rapid, large-scale action — collateral damage, destabilization, "blowback" — are treated as entirely tractable. The decisive application of force in defense of national interests and the presumed deterrent effect of such action are supposed to be a sufficient palliative. Residual instabilities can be managed through an expansion of peacetime military engagement. This last axiom evinces a confidence that the United States can achieve "escalation dominance" of a sort over whatever problems might arise in the wake of war.
The administration's policy framework induces a kind of tunnel vision that makes precipitous action and ambitious war objectives likely. With regard to the goals of Operation Enduring Freedom, it dictated targeting the Taliban for extinction and minimized the effects of pursuing this course. With regard to the war's strategy, it led the United States to overestimate its capacity to quickly and reliably bend Pakistan to its purposes. And then, midway through the war, it led the United States to minimize the risks of unleashing the Northern Alliance. Throughout the war it led the United States to depreciate the negative repercussions of the strategic bombing campaign, the problem of post-war chaos, and the importance of measures to stabilize and rehabilitate Afghan society.
The administration's focus on states and state actors comports well with the structure of American military power and with prevalent concepts about its proper use — including the application of decisive force and traditional notions of deterrence. But the administration's paradigm reduces attention to subnational and transnational dynamics, where most of the answers regarding the new terrorism reside.
Terrorists are notoriously difficult to deter — especially the suicidal variety; the same is true of social movements that are driven by visceral hatred or apocalyptic visions. States, however, are more amenable to deterrence — at least in Realist orthodoxy, which treats them as unified, rational agents. Unfortunately, this axiom has limited application in the case of the fragile quasi-states in whose territory organizations like Al Qaeda often take residence.
At any rate, the proposition that transnational terrorist organizations need states in order to survive and prosper is simply false. None of the terrorist capabilities demonstrated on 11 September require a large infrastructure and none require an intentionally cooperating state. Indeed, the 11 September terrorist cells were less dependent functionally on Al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan than on flight schools in Florida.
What was most important to the genesis of Al Qaeda was a circumstance: the 20-year Afghan civil war — and the Kalashnikov culture it produced. Although outside powers — especially the Soviet Union, United States, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia — played pivotal roles in this terrible drama, none sought or expected this outcome; it was inadvertent. Likewise, the terrorist activities of Al Qaeda that concern us the most were peripheral to its relationship with the Taliban. That relationship attests not to the rationality of the Taliban quasi-state, but to its weakness and dysfunctional nature.
A true appreciation of the new terrorism should draw our attention back to the "problem cluster" of which it is part, encompassing the phenomena of fragile states, war-ravaged societies, inter-communal and ethnic conflict, and associated regional rivalries. It should accentuate the importance of remedial steps: conflict reduction, humanitarian relief, and development assistance of all types. And it should sensitize us to the problem of inadvertency in the conduct of military affairs. But these issues and requirements fall largely outside the scope of Realist tunnel vision.
In 6 December testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Haass, the director of Policy Planning for the State Department, pledged that the United States would strictly limit its involvement in the post-war reconstruction of Afghanistan. Other countries will do most of the work and provide most of the funds, he suggested, because the United States did the "lion's share of the world's work" in the military operation. 85
We want to do enough to basically realize our goals in Afghanistan, to put it crudely, so that we don't have to do what we've just done in several years. On the other hand we don't want to get involved in the intrusive nation-building which would be resented by Afghans or resisted by them ultimately.
But Haass' perspective and priorities are inverted. First, nation-building is too important to simply subcontract. Second, the military and non-military aspects of bringing stability to Afghanistan should be integrated, not dichotomized — and certainly not along national lines. Finally, it is not nation-building that is likely to make America a target of Afghan resentment. More serious are the residual effects of the bombing campaign, which directly claimed the lives of at least 1,000 Afghan civilians, probably added more than another 3,000 deaths to the toll of the country's humanitarian crisis, and certainly produced 500,000 new refugees and displaced persons. At the top of America's post-war priorities should be measures to reverse the impression left by the bombing campaign.
For Juma Khan, a resident of a Khanabad suburb, who lost 15 members of his extended family in a US bombing raid, the calculus is simple: "[W]hoever bombed me is my enemy."Consternation over civilian bombing casualties also reaches into the ranks of pro-Western militia leaders, such as Haji Muhammad Zaman, who is military commander for the Eastern Shura. Zaman's troops were central to the operations against the Al Qaeda camp at Tora Bora. Reflecting on bombing errors in nearby villages — by various reports between 35 and 200 civilians were killed — and on subsequent official denials, Zaman was incredulous: 87
Why are they hitting civilians? This is very bad. Hundreds have been killed and injured. It is like a crime against humanity. Aren't we human?
Zaman's sense of alienation from the American purpose will register in the Afghan understanding of Operation Enduring Freedom. On a more intimate level so will those of Rukia, a mother who lost her five children to a bombing raid outside Kandahar:
It is our wish to have peace, but it is impossible. First, we had the war with Russia. Then the Taliban came, and now the United States attacking us again and again. I will pray that the trouble America made for us will fall on America. We hate Americans. 88
These reactions should be counted among the long-term effects of the bombing campaign. But in the logic of state-centric Realism they virtually disappear. They are presumed to be sealed within a black box called the nation-state, which can be disciplined by traditional deterrence or decisive force. The events of 11 September should have ended forever the influence of this reassuring vignette. The attacking entity was subnational in origin and transnational in character. It was driven by visceral hatred, not state power. And what distinguished it, if anything, was its capacity to live and breed in the interstices of the nation-state and the international system.
Effective action against terrorism depends on a unique synergy of military and non-military measures — the latter including diplomatic, humanitarian, development, peace-building, and law-enforcement efforts. The synergy of the military and non-military aspects of response is that the latter serve to keep threat generation down to a level that military efforts can manage. In turn, military efforts serve to guarantee non-military measures and help maintain the conditions in which they might hope to succeed. The ultimate aim and measure of success is the establishment of a self-sustaining stability — one that does not leak terrorism.
It is also essential that we combat terrorism in ways that do not contribute to interstate instability — that is, war potentials of the interstate variety. A failure to do this would simply exchange one type of problem for another and undermine the basis for attending to either. The maintenance of international stability requires that the solution to transnational problems be detached from the advance of any one nation's (or alliance's) exclusive interests or power position. It also requires that the resort to force in international affairs be strictly limited — especially when it is undertaken on a unilateral or narrowly multi-national basis. A failure to abide by this stricture would lower the threshold for war generally, thus increasing the burden of deterrence.
It is in the integration, balancing, and pacing of military and nonmilitary, unilateral and cooperative initiatives that Operation Enduring Freedom failed — and the result is greater instability in Afghanistan and in several regions of the world.
Operations Desert Storm, Allied Force, and Enduring Freedom suggest a greater US ability to transcend the problems associated with Vietnam-type "quagmires". This capacity involves the quick application of decisive force, a reliance on proxy fighters and standoff modes of warfare, the presence of a relatively weak and isolated foe, the absence of a competing superpower, and the effective shaping of media discourse. Also important are new technical capabilities that allow the US military to see the battlefield, allocate forces, and attack targets more accurately than before — what some see as a capacity to thin, if not lift, the fog of war.
America's recent experiences on the battlefield may give it greater confidence in war. But there is more to be concerned about down this road than just Vietnam-style "quagmires". The experience of the First World War is suggestive. The interlocking military pacts, minor wars, colonial competitions, multiple interventions, and arms races that preceded the First World War constituted a different type of quagmire: a self-constituting or emergent one. This quagmire had no discernible boundary. It developed almost imperceptibly before reaching a catastrophe point and then suddenly engulfing its participants. The precipitating incident was an act of state-supported terrorism involving Serbia and Austria-Hungary that drew 15 more nations into war. The resulting disaster, which claimed 15 million lives, had been forty years in the making. And every step of the journey, except the last ones, seemed manageable to the nations that were taking them. Although they walked confidently, they could have no real appreciation of the cumulative interactive effects of their military initiatives. 89 These were shrouded in uncertainty — what might be called the "fog of peace".
The example of the First World War suggests that it is not enough that nations be careful where they walk in the world — as the United States did following its Vietnam debacle. It is also necessary that nations take care how they walk in the world. This poses a daunting challenge to national leadership, which must practice restraint even when the field of action appears clear. And meeting this challenge will never be more difficult than when a nation finds itself in hot pursuit of the devil.
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