The end of 2003 is an appropriate time to assess the condition of the United Statess war on terror in its three most active campaigns Iraq, Afghanistan, and against al-Qaida. Where is the war going and who is winning?
The Iraqi maelstrom
Immediately after the capture of Saddam Hussein there were hopes that the bitter insurgency that has developed over the past nine months would die down. Early indications were that this is unlikely. While the intensity of attacks against US troops appeared to have diminished, the bombing of police stations and the killing of people deemed to be collaborating with the Americans continued unabated (see last weeks column in this series).
In the first fourteen days after Saddam Hussein had been detained, 12 US service members were killed and 105 injured. Just over a week after his capture, Saddam was reported as being uncooperative during interrogation, but some materials found with him were useful as intelligence. More than two weeks after his detention, the overall situation is still unclear, but certain features are now evident and do give us some indication of probable trends.
The first development is that the US forces are conducting particularly vigorous counter-insurgency operations that have resulted in hundreds of detentions and a number of deaths of possible insurgents and also of civilians. For several days, US troops did not suffer any fatalities, although there were many injuries suffered during the counter-insurgency actions.
Then, eight days after Saddam Husseins detention, two US soldiers were killed in Baghdad and others injured in an attack on a military convoy. Within days there were further attacks and attempted attacks on police stations. There was also an upsurge in the sabotage of oil facilities. Reports from multiple sources indicate a series of attacks, probably coordinated, on oil pipelines in three different parts of Iraq, coupled with the destruction of storage tanks in South Baghdad with the loss of 2.6 million gallons of petrol.
The increased rate of attacks on oil facilities is most probably designed to hit a weak point of the US-occupation the persistent energy shortages that have plagued much of Iraq over the past three months. These have resulted in mile-long queues at petrol stations and consequent frustration.
Over the Christmas period, there was a particularly high level of action against US troops and Iraqis working with the Americans. On Thursday and Friday of last week, the US forces lost four more troops killed and on Friday a US-appointed member of a local council in Mosul and his son were killed and, earlier in the week a judge had been assassinated in the same city.
Then on Saturday 27 December came a series of coordinated bomb, mortar and firearm attacks on coalition troops in the southern city of Karbala. Four Bulgarian and two Thai troops were killed in the attacks as well as seven Iraqis, and another Bulgarian soldier and five Iraqis died later; 30 coalition troops and 130 Iraqis were injured. The following day, two more American soldiers were killed, in Fallujah and Baghdad.
More generally, it now appears that the casualties inflicted on United States forces since the war started have been substantial much larger than has generally been admitted. As of 17 December, the Pentagon was reporting that 457 troops had died and 2,273 wounded in action.
But even these figures underestimate the extent of the problems being faced. For there have also been 8,581 medical evacuations, including 3,843 for non-battle injuries, giving an evacuation total of nearly 11,000, about 8.5% of all the troops stationed in Iraq in recent months, this being in addition to illnesses and injuries treated within Iraq itself. (Mark Benjamin, Medical Evacuations From Iraq Near 11,000, UPI, 19 December 2003). Moreover, the numbers of US troops killed and injured in the four months since the beginning of September have been twice as high as those killed in the previous four months.
Assessing current trends in the conflict remains difficult but there has been little decrease in the level of guerrilla activity, in spite of the US offensives in the Sunni triangle. This offensive is based on what is believed to be an improved level of intelligence that is, in turn, aided by the redeployment of analysts working with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) in its search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
The ISG may still find minor evidence of some WMD programmes, but its work is essentially finished as the Bush administration moves away from arguing the need for war based on an immediate Iraqi WMD threat and more towards the potential that Iraq may have had to develop such weapons in the future.
This is hardly of direct relevance to the insurgency, and the core question remains; is it essentially Baathist and will it die away with Saddam Husseins detention, or is a more general insurgency in the early stages of development aided by paramilitaries from elsewhere in the region? For the moment the answer is unclear but the insurgency has not diminished, even in the face of Husseins detention, improved US intelligence and a sustained counter-offensive.
The Afghan dilemma
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan a significant change in US policy has started with little publicity but substantial implications. In the past six months, there has been an increased level of Taliban activity, with much of it directed not against the US troops operating in the country but against Afghan police and army units and international aid organisations. In the past few months at least 100 Afghan police officers have been killed along with 13 Afghan and two foreign aid workers. The attacks on government forces have enabled Taliban militia to develop substantial power bases in some of the more remote districts of southern and eastern Afghanistan, and to establish the means to develop a renewed guerrilla campaign next summer (see the column of 27 November in this series).
The developing problems in Afghanistan have resulted in the United States appointing a new ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, who also retains his previous position as special presidential envoy to Afghanistan. He takes up his post in the wake of a US decision to increase aid by $1.2 billion and to revamp its military commitments.
At the core of the latter is a decision to expand military Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT), groups of 50 to 70 military working in towns and cities to provide security for reconstruction efforts. PRTs have been deployed on a small scale so far, not least by the UK, but they do not form part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which has had some success in aiding the Afghan government to ensure security in and around Kabul.
The US military, under its current head, Lieutenant General David Barno, has most of its 10,000-plus forces located at large bases such as Bagram and the air base near Kandahar. Now it plans to develop up to twelve PRT groups in different parts of the country.
This new approach can be viewed in two ways. In one sense it is a practical response to a worsening security environment that may well make some reconstruction projects more secure. Against this, the expansion of PRTs is essentially a US operation that does not link in fully with wider UN efforts and may end up being yet one more form of counter-insurgency action. Such action has, in recent weeks, aroused antagonism in Afghanistan in the wake of civilian deaths, including the two separate incidents of children being killed.
What has to be remembered is that experienced UN officials have long called for the expansion of ISAF to many other parts of Afghanistan, deploying up to 30,000 troops rather than the 5,000 currently in the country. This, combined with substantially increased reconstruction and development assistance, is considered essential, and the limited changes in US aid and military policy may be an acknowledgement of current problems but still falls very far short of what is required.
That the security situation in Afghanistan remains deeply problematic is shown by recent attacks in Kabul. Last week a bomb damaged a UN compound and last Saturday a huge bomb killed four Afghan police officers and two other Afghans near the airport. Although it was not widely reported, one of the other Afghans killed was the head of the Afghan defence ministers personal security force.
The al-Qaida threat
In terms of markers for the future, the recent warnings of potential al-Qaida activity serve as a reminder of the capacity of al-Qaida and its affiliates to respond to President Bushs war on terror. On 17 December, the Bush administration issued a strong warning about future paramilitary activity in Saudi Arabia, advising the 37,000 private US citizens in the country to consider their position and offering free flights home to all non-essential diplomatic staff and their families at the Riyadh embassy and the Jeddah and Dhahran consulates.
Four days later, the US secretary for homeland security, Tom Ridge, issued a warning of possible attacks against the continental United States and placed security and intelligence agencies on orange alert for only the fifth time since 9/11. In parallel with this, the Arabic TV news channel al-Jazeera, broadcast a tape from Osama bin Ladens deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warning of further attacks.
That such a circumstance persists well over two years after the start of the war on terror, including the termination of two regimes and the detention of thousands of suspects across the world, indicates that al-Qaida and its affiliates retain a formidable capacity for action, recently demonstrated by bombing raids in Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Furthermore, the two assassination attempts on President Musharraf in Pakistan may have had only an indirect al-Qaida connection but their sophistication and levels of organisation indicate that elements of the Pakistani intelligence and security forces have been penetrated. Those responsible for the attacks must be assumed to have a capacity for further action, and this is against a regime regarded by Washington as crucial to its regional security interests and armed with nuclear weapons.
Although the United States is pursuing its war with vigour, it is evident that its opponents are able to adapt to changing circumstances. In short, al-Qaida and related networks are evolving. Much of this involves a kind of franchising of methods and targeting to local groups that form part of a loose federation, coupled with the maintenance of sufficient financial resources to maintain viability.
Implications: whos adapting faster?
What is striking about all three problems facing the Bush administration Afghanistan, al-Qaida and Iraq is the manner in which its opponents learn to respond to overwhelming US military superiority. In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime is terminated within three months, but two years down the line its guerrilla forces are resurgent, targeting the weak links in the Karzai administration while building relations with self-serving warlords. Meanwhile, al-Qaida changes its form, methods and linkages to adapt to the war on terror, retaining an ability to act that requires the United States to warn its own citizens of the potential for an attack as devastating as 9/11.
Finally, in Iraq, oppositional forces demonstrate an ability to target the weaknesses in US security. Sufficient attacks on well-armed US patrols are conducted to limit American engagement with ordinary Iraqis, while much greater emphasis is placed on killing Iraqi police and security forces, politicians and public service managers, together with sustained sabotage of energy facilities.
During the course of the last twenty-seven months, the United States military, security and intelligence forces have developed a wide range of methods for pursuing their war on terror. Over the same period, their opponents have done likewise. Bearing in mind the background increase in anti-Americanism, especially in the Middle East, it has to be open to question which force is evolving faster.
