By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
October 16, 2001
The complexities of fighting Osama bin Laden's terrorism was inadvertently highlighted by an article in the Pakistan Observer today . In the article, entitled Bombing of Afghanistan should stop A M (R) Ayaz A Khan, observes "President George Bush as Commander-in-Chief of the mightest military should halt the bombing and direct his generals to rethink and retailer a military strategy against a country which has already been pushed into the cave age."
War has been going on in Afghanistan for 22 years - this time. War is basically a way of life in the region. However, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said,
"The Taliban whose military has been built on a loose doctrine of guerilla based warfare, has little in the way of valued material that can be destroyed with missiles and bombs. After twenty two-years of war in Afghanistan the Taliban have learned to make do with little. They offer very few targets that are valuable, that can be hit from the air. We have to have a clear understanding of what is possible in a country like that. Much of the country is rubble."
Khan went on to describe America's enemy,
"Talibans fighting style and war doctrine for guerilla fighting is very different from that of conventional forces. Eight to twelve Taliban fighters have a double cabin four by four Toyota pickup, in which they carry their weapons - Kalashinikov rifles, machine guns, RPG-7 rockets, ammunition, walkie-talkies, rations and a blanket. The thick blanket provides camouflage, cover for weapons and for warmth at night. This is the basic fighting unit. So the allies are in for a long war because such mobile fighting units in their thousands are spread all over Afghanistan, and they are in communication with each other. They can quickly hide in caves, which cannot be seen by aerial cameras.With fuel oil and other military provisions stopped by Pakistan, organised fighting against the Allied Coalition is out. Osama bin Laden and his six look alikes and his Al-Qaida followers have gone into hiding. With four look alike of Mullah Umars, who and where is the real Mullah Umer is a million dollar question. It could only be determined by DNA check, after the celebrated Taliban leader is caught. With no worthwhile targets to bomb, and no way that the fugitives can be flushed out of the thousand of caves in the mountains of Afghanistan, commonsense demands that America call a halt to the bombing of a county which is totally devastated and wretched.
Secretary Rumsfeld significantly said that, "What we are doing that which is which is doable." Wisdom demands that reckless and indiscriminate bombing of Afghanistan be immediately stopped. Having said that there are no worth while targets for aerial bombing, there is no sense what so ever to continue with bombing a country into rubble and into heap of dust.
America will gain nothing by the bombing onslaught on devastated, starving, shelterless, frightened and fleeing Afghan men, women and children. President George Bush as Commander-in-Chief of the mightiest military should halt the bombing and direct his generals to rethink and retailer a military strategy against a country which has already been pushed into the cave age.General Meyers, Secretary Rumsfeld and British Defence Secretary Geofery Hoon's claim of destroying terrorist training camps has to be taken with a pinch of salt. Except the former Army training facility at Rishkhoor, near Kabul, Taliban have no fixed training camps or facilities. Taliban get on the job training ie in the battlefields itself. Osama bin Londen's training camps reportedly are also mobile. Osama has been moving from province to province, and has never stayed in one place for more than six weeks. No one in Afghanistan knows the word Al-Qaida. It has been coined by the Americans and the British. Good luck to the Allies if they can find any Al-Qaida training camp.
Perhaps. On the other hand, the targets we are being shown before and after pictures of have buildings and often airplanes. They are not parking their airplanes in caves. Khan's argument for a halt in the bombing was summed up by the following argument:
"The repeated threats by President George Bush of bombing other countries harbouring terrorists has sent a wave of fear and anxiety throughout Pakistan. The pro-Taliban and pro-Osama protest rallies in Pakistani cities are indicative of utter ignorance, acute prejudice and tendency towards violence among the Pushtoon clergy, especially in the NWFP and Balochistan. The overwhelming majority of the Pakistani population, and Afghan population are sick and tired of the schizophrenic bigotry of the Taliban and Pakistani Mullahs. The effort of the Musharraf Government is to bring the Pakistani Mullahs on track by engaging them to desist from destructive activity. The Mullahs have chosen the dangerous path of destruction and destabilization of Pakistani polity and economy. Their schemes and motives could be stalled and stopped by a halt to US bombing of Afghanistan."
I'm not a military expert. However, the prime tool Osama bin Laden and the Mullahs of Pakistan are using to gain control is primitive fear, not informed technology which is America's forte. It is fear as a weapon that is behind the mail delivery of anthrax in America. And, it should be noted that, so far, the anthrax weapon has been spectacularly ineffective compared with the more than 5000 deaths in a matter of minutes on September 11th.
Actually, this is often typical of biological warfare. My son, Dr. Guy Grooms, was the battalion surgeon during Desert Storm for the Marine battalion that took Kuwait City. He learned quite a bit first hand about chemical and biological warfare in that war. He told me recently that the technology for delivering biological weapons via missile has not been mastered. Missile delivered anthrax, for example, explodes on impact, killing the bacteria.
There has been a lot of frightened discussion of the possibility of terrorists using a highly contagious disease like smallpox. That also has its drawbacks. There is no way to make it stay in the enemy's territory, once released. And, while the American public is fearful of it, there is sufficient money and technology to quickly immunize Americans. There isn't enough money or technology to immunize all of Asia or Africa. Releasing smallpox that could devastate one's own country is not productive.
This has reminded me of one of America's homegrown terrorists, the environmentalist wacko, Ted Kaczynski who eluded the F.B.I. for 17 years, during which time he orchestrated 16 explosions that killed three people and injured 23 others. He, like Osama Bin Laden, was an educated, bearded, primitive living fanatic. Kacrynski, like Osama Bin Laden, was not after a political revolution. As Kacrynski put it in his "Manifesto" his was "a revolution against the industrial system." He outlined "the measures that those who hate the industrial system should take in order to prepare the way for a revolution against an industrial system. "This is not to be a POLITICAL revolution," he said. "Its object will be to overthrow not governments but the economic and technological basis of the present society." Osama Bin Laden's goals exactly.
How do you overthrow the economic and technological basis of America's highly successful economic and technological society from a cave or a hermit cabin in the woods? It's done primarily with fear. And, how can a highly successful economic and technological society avoid defeat? How was Ted Kacrynski defeated? He was defeated when, after publication of his Manifesto, his own brother tipped off the police because he recognized the philosophy. In many ways, the courage of one man defeated Kacrynski , once the public had enough information to help.
Defeating Osama Bin Laden may be following a similar path. Contrary to what Khan seems to think, President Bush is not indiscriminately bombing Afghanistan. Secondly, as he points out, Bin Laden may be running out of fuel, which will quickly stop his juggernaut, because one man, Pakistan's leader, General Pervez Musharraf, who ousted the pro-Taliban government of Nawaz Sharif in 1999. Musharraf has cast his lot with the United Nations and the West and, in spite of what may be a numerical majority against him, he has stopped shipments of gas to Bin Laden and his ragtag army. After a day of meetings, Secretary of State Colin Powell called Musharraf, who has put a number of the terrorist supporting clerics under house arrest to halt the street violence, a "bold and courageous" man who has chosen a "morally correct but politically dangerous path in backing the campaign against terrorism."
It appears that, because of the decisive action, including the bombing of Taliban resources, the Taliban government in Afghanistan is looking for a cave or two in which to hide. Colin Powell said, on leaving Pakistan, "We are getting ready for the possibility that sometime in the near future there could be a need to respond to the collapse of the government, if one could call that evil regime a government." He clearly was discussing the make-up of that new government with Musharraf.
Powell also announced that he had appointed Richard N. Haass, the State Department's director of policy planning, to be his special coordinator on Afghanistan in talks at the United Nations and with other coalition partners. According to the N.Y. Times it was Haass who undertook in Rome the administration's first consultations with the deposed Afghan king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, on how to organize Afghanistan's unruly ethnic clans into a viable state that could succeed the Taliban.
After six years of the Taliban, which took Afghanistan back to the dark ages, hopefully the Afghan people have learned something. And, while the suffering of the people is always sad, it is often necessary to bring about change. As Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence, "Mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by altering forms to which they are accustomed."
Of course, we might say the same thing about ourselves after eight years of incredibly inept Clinton foreign policy under Madeleine Albright that brought us to the current crisis. Colin Powell, a military leader respected by the powerful, good and bad, worldwide is restoring respect for America, because there is good leadership in the White House.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
For the Pakistan Observer - http://www.pakobserver.com