An earlier column in this series (5 February 2004) reported that United States military planners were coming to recognise a point of vital strategic importance to them: that while current attention is focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the core of their problem lies elsewhere, specifically in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia presents particular difficulties partly because of different outlooks among the various power-centres of the House of Saud, partly because the country is a centre for anti-American groups loosely allied to al-Qaida, as well as a source of funding and other support for the network. Yet Saudi Arabia does not offer a territory from which paramilitary groups can base their activities in order to operate elsewhere. In this respect Saudi Arabia is not as immediately serious a concern as Pakistan.
Paul Rogerss new book, a collection of his openDemocracy weekly columns, is now available. A war on terror: Afghanistan and after is published by Pluto Press
Many people in Pakistan, particularly in areas of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) adjacent to Afghanistan, are ready to give substantial support to al-Qaida, the Taliban and their affiliates. There are also persistent doubts about the loyalty of elements of the countrys army and intelligence services. The two recent assassination attempts on the life of the president, Pervez Musharraf, testify to the fragility of the Islamabad regime.
As the 5 February column noted, the Chicago Tribune had reported (28 January 2004) that the USs worries about Pakistan and the potential threat to Musharrafs rule that it was planning major military operations in the spring in Pakistan itself. There were clear military and political risks involved in such a course, but these had to be weighed against the urgent need to curb a potential Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan by summer 2004.
In the month since that report, it has emerged that the US military in Afghanistan and the Pakistan armed forces across the border have already embarked on a significant aggressive operation. It is not yet clear whether it will involve major American military action in Pakistan, but it is likely to be the biggest anti-Taliban operation over the last two years, and will have an additional aim: killing or capturing Osama bin Laden.
A trilateral agenda
It is likely also that large numbers of US special forces will participate in military operations in the region in the coming months. This represents part of a major trend in US war-fighting. President Bushs war on terror is now placing extensive reliance on such forces, but this presupposes an answer to the question: is their mobilisation an appropriate response to the security predicament facing the United States?
In Afghanistan itself, US forces are upbeat on the tasks facing them. The head of US forces there, Lieutenant-General David Barno, declared recently of al-Qaida and the Taliban that the sand in their hourglass is running out . Their day has ended and this year will decisively sound the death knell of their movement in Afghanistan.
Current operations have three components: action in Afghanistan, Pakistan army action in the NWFP, and close collaboration between US intelligence and some parts of the Musharraf military. In the latter case, the director of the CIA, George Tenet, recently paid a low-profile visit to Islamabad to discuss the coordination of operations.
In the immediate term, it seems that dependable units of Pakistans army are operating close to the Afghan border and will commence major military actions within the next month or two. Recent security decrees are revealing of an already higher level of activity. Local people found sheltering fugitives will be threatened with up to seven years imprisonment, and their communities liable to fines of up to $17,800, in a colonial-era approach of presumed collective responsibility. The destruction of houses where suspects may have been hidden, and large-scale cordon-and-search operations, are other measures reminiscent of colonial wars such as the Mau Mau rebellion in 1950s Kenya.
In concert with the Pakistan activity, US forces in eastern Afghanistan are progressively increasing their military tempo from irregular offensives against particular localities to a more general offensive against the Taliban elements as a whole. This hammer-and-anvil collaboration between the US and their Pakistan counterparts is intended to pre-empt an anticipated, and already signalled, Taliban resurgence.
A mental entrapment
The large ambition of this strategy is evident: US military planners see it as a way to terminate Taliban resistance once and for all. But even as it starts, it carries two specific and one general danger. First, if the joint operations do not succeed in curbing a Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the immediate term, there will be very heavy pressure on Pakistan to accept US troops operating within its territory on an extensive scale. The political implications of this prospect would be immense.
Second, if the counter-offensive does not work, and the United States is unable to scale down its forces in Afghanistan in the coming months, this will be taken as evidence by the Taliban and paramilitary groups that the United States cannot win its war in al-Qaidas original heartland. Even the capture or death of Osama bin Laden would not qualify as a sufficient success, given that the al-Qaida movement is very much wider than that one individual.
The general danger of the USs strategy in the region lies in its implied definition of the war on terror as fundamentally a military operation. This is revealed, in particular, in the measurably greater emphasis being placed on special forces in an expanded Special Operations Command (SOCOM) [see William J. Arkin, Not a Magic Bullet, Los Angeles Times, 22 February 2004 (registration only)].
The budget increase necessary to fuel this expansion (some 35% in 2004 alone) is being accompanied by a particular focus on clandestine operations designed to kill or capture people like Osama bin Laden. Much of the preparations surround a field unit known as Joint Task Force 121. It is likely to concentrate its targeting efforts in Afghanistan, but these will exemplify a far broader mindset that envisages the overall war on terror as a campaign to eliminate key individuals one by one.
This approach fits Donald Rumsfelds perception of the whole conflict very well. But in a larger frame it reflects the worldview of a United States administration unable to recognise the very nature of the problem it currently faces.
Both Iraq and Afghanistan-Pakistan offer evidence of this assessment. In Iraq in mid-December 2003, it was being confidently claimed that the insurgents were centred on a few extended families in the so-called Sunni triangle, and that as they were isolated, detained or killed, the insurgency would dissolve. Over two months later, Iraq remains deeply unstable, with further attacks on police stations and other security centres in the past few days.
In Afghanistan, both US forces on the ground and their political leaders in the Pentagon believe that the United States possesses the ability to destroy the leadership of al-Qaida and its affiliates, and that this will cripple if not end their activities.
In each theatre of conflict, the United States shows little or no understanding of the nature of the opposition that it confronts, nor of its evolving and adaptive character, nor of the increased support it can draw on support reinforced by what is seen as the continuing foreign occupation of (in Iraq) a major Arab state.
It is possible that operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the next couple of months will indeed damage the Taliban and al-Qaida, and may even lead to the removal of Osama bin Laden. If so, this will be hailed as a major victory, a vindication of the military approach to the war on terror. In the event, that would be as deeply misleading as the presumption that Saddam Husseins capture would end the insurgency in Iraq.
But if the planned offensive does not achieve its aims, and an evidently resurgent Taliban is able to operate in parts of Afghanistan this summer, it is unlikely that even this will persuade people like Donald Rumsfeld to rethink. Instead, even more force will be brought to bear, as the war on terror approaches its third year.
