AFGHANISTAN

[Wayne Johnson]

How do you "bomb someone back to the Stone Age" when...a) they are already
there: b) they are "spiritually prepared" to remain there for generations?
Somehow, this doesn't look like a "win-win" scenario, rather the exact
opposite.

B.

-----Original Message-----
From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of Roger Baker
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 11:26 AM
To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
Subject: AFGHANISTAN



Bombing them back into the stone age has been tried already with mixed
results.
This is a fairly long and detailed examination of what it's really like to
deal with fighting in Afghanistan.  It contains a lot of information that
_should_ go into policy decisions.  So far there's not much sign that any
of it has.  Originally posted on The American Prospect website.

Also, why those Muslims are so damn pissed off.
Written ten years ago but nothing has changed much since.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/90sep/rage.htm

-- Roger

          ************************************************

Some Things To Consider About Afghanistan -- From Those Who've Been There

10.1.01
by Jason Vest

>From 1988 to 1992, freelance photographer Patrick O'Donnell was based in
Peshawar, Pakistan, and often traveled deep into Afghanistan -- frequently
in the company of Australian journalist Anthony Davis, who remains a
leading authority on Afghanistan, and photograher Robert Nickelsberg, who
briefly returned to Afghanistan earlier this year. Another friend of
O'Donnell's, David Dienstag, spent much of the 80s either lobbying in
Washington for the Federation for American-Afghan Action or carrying a
Kalashnikov with the mujahedin who fought against the Soviet Union in
Afghanistan.

I asked the four what advice they had for those now contemplating American
military action in Afghanistan. They agreed on several points. Their
warnings were echoed by other old hands, including the veteran American
intelligence officer whose analysis of the situation was requested by the
Office of the Secretary of Defense. His brief report (a copy of which was
leaked to me) was delivered last week.

Their advice:

-Consider Pakistan an ally in name only, and appreciate that all dealings
with Pakistan are fraught with peril.
        By all appearances, General Pervez Musharraf is a military leader
who
deposed a civilian government and now rules Pakistan as a dictator. In
reality, Musharraf has limited control over the country, and even less
control over Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) --
often referred to as a "state within a state" -- whose recently reassigned
chief, General Mir Aslam Beg, has praised the Taliban as having "resolutely
stood to achieve dignity and freedom." Their "endurance," he has said, "is
a rich tribute to human courage, which flows from Faith."

As far as America's newspapers of record are concerned, Pakistan may as
well not have an intelligence service. Since September 11, The Washington
Post has made one passing mention of ISI, and The New York Times has
acknowledged it less than half a dozen times. Indeed, a line in a September
17 Times report had some old hands howling with laughter. It referred to
ISI as an agency "thought to have unique intelligence on Mr. Bin Laden's
operations in Afghanistan and his whereabouts" -- a remarkably circumspect
characterization, given that ISI has personnel on the ground fighting with
the Taliban. "Whatever Musharraf says, you can't expect Pakistan to be
speaking with one voice, or acting coherently with regard to Afghanistan,"
says Dienstag. "Especially as ISI's former head is as much an independent
Islamist romantic as the Taliban."

The private intelligence report submitted to the Secretary of Defense
offers another explanation. Unhappy with the patchwork quilt of contentious
factions that was Afghanistan in the early 90s, Pakistan's concern, the
report says, "was to promote ethnic Pashtun control over the country, which
was being run by Afghans hostile to Pashtun rule and Pakistani influence."
(The Pashtun are the second largest ethnic group in Pakistan and constitute
about 40 percent of the Afghan population.) On that score, the "active
military support" that flowed from ISI to the group of students who became
the Taliban seems to have been a success. The report characterizes the
Taliban today as "amenable to Pakistani political influence although not
totally subservient to it."

The Taliban have also been excellent proxies in the service of Pakistan's
foreign policy of keeping its neighbors off balance. The report to the
Secretary of Defense notes that ISI has "used its position and support to
the Taliban to establish within Afghanistan a series of training camps for
Kashmiri terrorists." The reference is, no doubt, to such hardcore Islamist
groups as Harakat-ul-Ansar and Lashkar-e-Taiba. "ISI personnel are present,
in mufti, to conduct the training," according to this report, which "allows
Pakistan 'plausible denial' that it is promoting insurgency in Kashmir."
Indeed, according to senior diplomatic and intelligence sources, the
training camps in Afghanistan that were hit by U.S. cruise missiles in 1998
were not being used by Bin Laden's forces, but by ISI to train Kashmiris.

While many observers are agnostic about reports from the Northern Alliance
that divisions of Pakistani regulars are seeing combat alongside the
Taliban, no one doubts that ISI officers and cadre are working and fighting
with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This may be less so under current ISI
chief Mahmood Ahmed, a secular Muslim and close friend of Musharraf, but
Davis and others say that ISI is not beyond subverting its own chief. "Some
of [ISI's people] may decide not to share intelligence to begin with. A lot
of information just isn't likely to be made available," he says. And
whatever is made available, says a senior U.S. government operative who has
worked with ISI, isn't likely to be of lasting value. Warns this official,
who wishes to remain anonymous, "On very specific, short-term matters,
they're ok, but on anything long-term, you've got a serious problem,
because of the political agendas involved."

(In fact, the United States is likely to rely more on India for
intelligence. Not only does India's Orwellianly-named Research and Analysis
Wing have good operatives on the ground in Afghanistan; but, according to
Indian press reports, Christina Rocca, Assistant Secretary of State for
South Asia, cultivated good ties with the Indians in a previous
professional life -- as the CIA officer in charge of tracking down the
Stinger missiles that the United States gave ISI for the mujahedin. Many of
the missiles ended up "missing," and Rocca's ire with ISI reached such
heights that she got Pakistan designated a state sponsor of terrorism in
1993.)

But wariness of Pakistan should not be limited to matters of intelligence.
"Putting U.S. troops into a place like Peshawar [the largest Pakistani city
near the Afghan border] would be similar to [putting a] Marine barracks in
Beirut," says Dienstag. "I do not share others' confidence that this is a
workable partnership. Be prepared for Pakistan to implode. The cancer of
extremism there has advanced to the terminal stage."

The mere presence of U.S. troops will inflame public opinion and political
intrigue, adds O'Donnell. If there's any notion of using a city like
Peshawar as a secure staging area for U.S. soldiers, particularly ground
troops, forget it. The area, he says, is awash in all manner of small arms
and artillery, as well as Taliban-style Islam. About a third of Taliban
cadre were taught in madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan's Northwest
Frontier Province near Peshawar, and the madrassas have continued to send
recruits. They also have entrenched Talibanism on the Pakistan side of the
border, effectively erasing the border.

"Everything west of Peshawar to the border, going north and south, is
called the 'Federally-Administered Tribal Area'. When we were there, we
referred to it as the 'Tribally-Administered Federal Area,"' O'Donnell
says. "The British could never control it; the best they could do is get a
treaty that gave them jurisdiction over the roads. The Pakistani government
inherited that agreement, and they don't go in there without troops, and
they don't stay for long. If we try to go in overland from Pakistan, it's a
logistical nightmare, and a tactical one as well. Taking any armor through
the tribal areas would be ill-advised. And while we could get in with
helicopters, troops would have a world of hurt waiting for them in Pakistan
after they got back from a mission."

-Appreciate that getting rid of Osama Bin Laden will not "win the war," and
a war on Bin Laden's organization, Al Qaeda, means a war with the Taliban.
        The intelligence analysis submitted to the Secretary of Defense
maintains
that Bin Laden's "death would demoralize his followers although by itself
[it] will not destroy his organization." Anthony Davis agrees with the last
part but takes issues with the first. "Either the Taliban decides to hand
him over, he gets snatched, or he gets killed," Davis says. "Paradoxically,
any of these could be the worst options. He will become either a martyr or
more of a cult figure than he already is. At the same time, his whole
infrastructure will remain behind. And the Taliban will say, 'You've got
what you wanted, but now you want more, so it's not about Bin Laden, but
about Afghanistan and Islam.'"

Of course, the Taliban already sees things that way. And indeed, as
Nickelsberg points out, look who's fighting on the Taliban's front lines to
secure the "new Mecca" of Afghanistan. "The Afghans now rely on Arabs,
Uzbeks, Chechens and Pakistanis as cannon fodder, " Nickelsberg says. The
goal of these fighters, as Bin Laden has said, is to impose a new caliphate
led by the Taliban's Mullah Omar on all the Muslim world. According to the
report to the Defense Secretary, there's no way to separate out Bin Laden,
the Taliban, and the Afghan war: "Bin Laden's estimated 4,000 to 5,000
fighters are intertwined with the Taliban military, and Mullah Omar
considers Bin Laden as his right hand." Over the past four years, the
report emphasizes, "Bin Laden's men have fought with the Taliban against
[Ahmand Shah] Massud, the recently assassinated leader of the Northern
Alliance, and Bin Laden has suffered the losses of at least seven hundred
men in the fighting, including one of his own sons a few months ago."

Current U.S. military doctrine is not suited to this kind of war and must
be changed. Over the past decade, many military and defense analysts have
argued that the threat most likely to menace America nowadays is an
"asymmetric" one. It will not come from the kind of easily identifiable
target for which the U.S. military is best prepared -- with big strategic,
high-tech projectiles that can be launched from afar and win the day. Nor
will it come from "rogue nations" equipped with ballistic missiles, the
phantom menace that "Star Wars" is supposed to defend against.

Moreover, these analysts say, when faced with an enemy who's not really a
state actor, is diffuse, highly mobile, low-tech, and fanatical, what's
crucial for the American military to have is not a slew of bombs and
missiles, but an entire force trained in maneuver warfare -- a style of
fighting that relies on light material, fast tactics, and good
intelligence. Soldiers and commanders must be trained to really understand
the enemy in order to outthink him and stay one step ahead.

The culture of the U.S. Special Forces does embrace these notions, as I was
recently reminded by Mark Lewis, a former U.S. Army Ranger now with the
Institute for Defense Analysis. But Lewis says that Special Forces alone
may not be enough in Afghanistan, and the United States has to take a hard
look at the readiness of the rest of the military for this kind of warfare.
"Part of the reason this war is going to take so long is that that there
are a whole bunch of capabilities. . . we need that we don't have, and what
we have isn't all that relevant," he says. "Your carrier battle groups are
not particularly useful. Your F-22 isn't. Your armored divisions aren't
either. You're gonna fight this by targeting specific groups of
individuals, which means you need a whole bunch of different intelligence
capabilities, and I'm not sure that a lot of conventional forces are
suitable for this."

O'Donnell and his friends aren't optimistic either. They say Special Forces
may be up to the task, but if regular army forces are deployed, they will
be in over their heads. "I think the U.S. military has evolved," says
O'Donnell, "but not enough to handle this." Dienstag sneers: "They say
we're in this for the long haul? Really? With aircraft carriers, against a
landlocked country that's been bombed before, with a people who can
withstand punishment and know the terrain? I hope when I hear people saying
'We don't need to do this overnight,' that means we're willing to do this
incrementally, rather than hit hard with too much force. Use food. Feed
civilians. Bin Laden will fight this as classically guerilla as he can, but
the key battleground may well be in the minds of his recruits and potential
recruits; that's how you'll 'drain the swamp.'"

-Know the enemy and the environment, and apply lessons learned from
everyone's past mistakes.
        The upside for the U.S. military is that its Special Forces are
trained
for maneuver warfare, and they do place a premium on understanding where
they're going. "Before we went to the Balkans, we studied the history,
because we knew everyone we'd talk to would bring it up and we knew we'd
lose respect in their eyes if we didn't know it, and they were surprised
when NCOs could fire back with that knowledge," says one Army Special
Forces officer. "We like to say if we cannot blend in with the indigenous
surroundings, at least we can understand them. And believe me, there are a
lot of guys studying everything they can about Afghanistan right now."

The officer concedes that this is a belated catch-up effort, which until
this month the nation's war colleges offered little on Afghanistan and the
Soviet experience there. ("We got an interesting guest lecture from a
Russian officer once," another officer says, "but that's about it.") For
example, though it's dated, one of the best books on fighting in
Afghanistan is Olivier Roy's Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, a
succinct but detailed 1986 study of the various factions of mujahedin and
the evolution of their strategy and tactics, as well as those of the
Soviets. It appears not to be on any required or recommended reading lists
at the war colleges. And while Lt. Col. Lester Grau's The Bear Went Over
the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, a translation of a
critical Soviet military analysis, was praised by military reviewers as
"outstanding" and "a valuable learning tool," the U.S. military stopped
publishing it years ago. A quick check with the military college libraries
suggests that Grau's sequel, The Other Side of the Mountain: Muhjahideen
Tactics in the Soviet-Afghan War, published last year, also hasn't cropped
up in many classrooms.

Still, it seems that Grau's counsel is now being sought by U.S. military
planners. Last week, he was not at his office in the Foreign Military
Studies section at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, but away on temporary duty at
an undisclosed location, and he is now under orders not to talk to the
media about anything. If true, it's good to know he's being listened to.

The reason to attend to this history is not that U.S. forces will
necessarily suffer the same defeats the Soviets did. There are, after all,
differences between the Soviet forces then and U.S. forces now. The Soviets
were beset by a largely conscripted army, bad relations between officers
and non-commissioned officers, a glaring lack of coordination between
conventional forces and KGB-run secret police, and strategy changes with
each new Soviet leader. It also suffered form an over-centralized command
structure, and armor that was too heavy to be of any use. While the U.S.
has no shortage of useless-in-this-case armor, it does, by contrast, have
an all-volunteer force that's well trained and led.

But however well trained U.S. forces may be, the Soviet experience gives a
good idea of what they'll be up against. So American planners should heed,
for instance, Olivier Roy's assessment of the Soviets in his 1986 study:
"Even if the Russians get better at moving around quickly in
search-and-destroy operations," he wrote, "they will not succeed in
surrounding and wiping out the Mujahedin in significant numbers. The very
flimsiness of the military infrastructure…means there are no military
objectives."

Or O'Donnell's assessment: "The Soviet Spetznaz, the elite heliborne
assault unit, almost always won every engagement decisively when they would
decide to move in some place," he says. "But they were incapable of holding
anyplace. Because the Afghans would just retreat into the hills, and strike
back when they wanted to. Basically, the Aghans didn't win any battles
against the Russians. Instead, they just wore them down. The Afghan ability
to absorb punishment should not be underestimated by anyone. They can't
dish it out well, but boy, can they take it."

And while the mujahedin were not so great at offensive action, O'Donnell
remembers only too well the zeal with which Bin Laden's imported Arabs went
looking for a fight. "I had tea and dinner with them a number of times," he
says. "They were lunatics. We called them the Foreign Legion, a collection
of maybe 500 hardcore Islamist expats from the Middle East and North
Africa, even China and Malaysia. Very, very hostile to foreigners, and
Americans in particular. For journalists, they were the people to go see,
because they loved shooting at communists and were always fighting. But
they made it clear they didn't like us, by spitting at us, pointing guns at
us, telling me they wanted to shoot me."

The analysis sent to the Secretary of Defense suggests not much has changed
since then: "Bin Laden is protected by a core of several hundred fanatic
guards who are willing to die to protect him from seizure. Several Bin
Laden fighters, captured by the Northern Alliance, have committed suicide
while in custody, " the author reports. "The Taliban itself will defend
against any foreign attempt to seize Bin Laden and will not cooperate in
any effort to destroy the training camps. As fierce battle proven fighters,
Taliban soldiers are courageous and will not flee."

-All military operations should be coordinated with, and in support of, the
Northern Alliance.
        The old hands have different takes on whether U.S. combat troops
would
inspire the average Afghan to rise up against the Taliban. Davis thinks
not. While the regime is hardly beloved by the majority (especially in the
south, where farmers have been forbidden to grow poppy, a major cash crop),
Davis says it's important to remember that Afghanistan 2001 is not
Afghanistan 1979. "The popular reaction to invasion would be very
different," he says, "and would not necessarily generate a popular
uprising. You have to bear in mind that 4 million people are potentially
about to starve due to famine, and people there are weary."

Dienstag disagrees, contending that if given supplies, average Afghans
would fight, because they're sick of Bin Laden's Arabs and the Taliban's
doctrines. "Those Wahaibis are so obnoxious it's astonishing," he says.
"They don't have popular support. Give an Afghan a gun and ammo and he'll
do it."

Nickelsberg takes a third position. "After 20 years of war, then civil war,
then famine," he says, "a lot of people are beyond resisting anymore. They
just mutter and go on about their ways." While an Afghan "could be very
much against the Taliban and willing to fight him," he says, "as soon as
someone else comes into the territory, that's another enemy. There's a
great suspicion of strangers, and people may not react the way foreign
soldiers expect, even though they have the best intentions." Besides, he
adds, alliances between fighting factions in Afghanistan tend to hold up
only as long as the money does. "Different military commanders who hold
different pieces of territory are bought off quite often by either the
[Northern] Alliance or the Taliban, and those allegiances are very fickle,"
he says. "Factor in the very suspicions nature towards outsiders and it
becomes very unpredictable."

What all of them do agree on, however, is the assessment that the Northern
Alliance is only too happy to fight -- and that U.S. military should give
the Alliance whatever it needs in supplies, arms, training, and then combat
support. This is the right thing to do: Because he was an ethnic Tajik, the
Alliance's leader Massud got none of the goodies the United States shipped
to ISI for disbursement to mujahedin during the struggle against the
Soviets. It is also the sensible thing to do, given the experience and
topographical knowledge of Massud's men. "My personal assessment is that we
can do this without significant use of ground forces," says a senior State
Department official with extensive Pakistan/Afghanistan experience. "If we
can help the Taliban opponents get rid of the Taliban, then they can take
care of the terrorists, because they hate them even more than we do."

According to the report presented to the Secretary of Defense, there has,
in fact, been limited liaising with the Alliance for some time, in the form
of a previously-unrevealed secret eavesdropping operation. "A network of
electronic collection posts already inside the country, supported by
Northern Alliance personnel, will assist in any American military
operation," the report says. It also reveals -- as The New York Times did
Sunday -- that "the Alliance has provided intelligence and other support to
the U.S., [and] Special Forces and CIA personnel have been afforded access
inside Afghanistan by Alliance forces." That said, the report acknowledges
that, in the past, "the U.S. appears to have missed an opportunity to
strengthen the opposition to the Taliban by providing lethal assistance to
the Alliance."

To be sure, the Northern Alliance is not the most cohesive group when it
comes to politics, and some of its members have a history of turning on
each other (as do most tribes and political factions in Afghanistan). And
like every combatant group that's fought in Afghanistan over the past 20
years, the Alliance has a dreadful record of human rights abuses and war
crimes. (That it's treated civilians in its territories less onerously than
the Taliban have is the best one can say for the Alliance on this score.)
For these reasons, some commentators have warned against the United States
having anything to do with the Alliance, lest we repeat a common American
foreign policy mistake -- allying with someone who's just as problematic,
now or later, as the enemy du jour.

But others say that the U.S. decision to walk away from Afghanistan after
the Soviet withdrawal and to let Pakistan do as it pleased there with tacit
U.S. support was what got us where we are now and is not a policy to be
repeated.

The civil component of any intervention in Afghanistan is crucial. Dienstag
and Nickelsberg argue that in simple atonement for that past mistake, the
U.S. should now be helping to get rid of the Taliban and also making an
effort to set up civil administration wherever possible in Afghanistan.
"There haven't been things like schools and hospitals there, either, and I
think it would be good to help build those, too," Dienstag says. "And those
are areas that allies who want to help [the United States] but don't want
to do it militarily could take a role."

O'Donnell believes that a high priority should be the establishment of
militarily protected safe havens, not unlike the enclaves that were set up
to protect imperiled refugees from Iraqi troops after their failed uprising
in 1991. "I hope that, if anything, this makes George W. do what George
Senior should have done for the Afghans ten years ago," he says. But
according to the officials I've spoken to in both the Pentagon and the
State Department, that is wishful thinking; at this point, they say,
military planners in particular are almost exclusively preoccupied with
pure combat operations.

Another critical job for diplomats is to encourage the "Rome Process," in
which Zahir Shah, the deposed King of Afghanistan who now lives in Italy,
has been endeavoring to establish a constitutional government-in-exile.
Diplomats should be fostering ties between the King's crowd, professionals
in the Afghan diaspora, and other leaders still in Afghanistan.

"We have to acknowledge that this so-called 'war' is pointless unless we
aid the process of rebuilding the country now," says a senior intelligence
official. "But in situations like this, this is always the hardest thing to
do, or the thing that gets lost in the shuffle."