The weekend news of advances by Northern Alliance fighters suggests a first dramatic turn in the war against those who harbor terrorists. Those advances also offer a blunt answer to those who have questioned why the U.S. has felt it necessary to drop more than 8,000 bombs on Afghanistan.
After a month of U.S. airstrikes, seemingly without major result, Americans had begun to doubt the effectiveness, even the strategy, of the military campaign. Others saw the bombing as a senseless assault that produced too many civilian casualties–an especially sensitive point for U.S. allies from Europe to Pakistan.
Looking for quick victory, armchair generals in Congress and academia pressed tough questions about the Bush administration’s war policy. Gathered around kitchen tables, office water coolers and televisions tuned to 24-hour news, some Americans wondered why we had attacked a crumbling country, at times using precision bombs against single tanks.
Now we know why. The Northern Alliance rebels, backed by U.S. air strikes and Special Forces commandos, appear to have scored the first significant victory of America’s war on terrorism. If alliance forces can hold their ground and consolidate new gains, their seizure of the northern crossroads town of Mazar-e Sharif from Taliban fighters, coupled with a weekend offensive spreading across northern Afghanistan, could open the way soon to an assault on the capital city, Kabul.
For all the doubts raised in recent days, the Bush team had some things right. This will be a long, twilight struggle. Patience is mandatory. But already there is real progress on the ground.
In any war, victory depends on taking time to build up forces, position equipment and plot strategy. Before launching the 1991 Persian Gulf War to oust the Iraqi army from Kuwait, it took President Bush’s father more than five months to build up U.S. troops, armor and warplanes in Saudi Arabia. In the current war, Bush waited less than one month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks before, on Oct. 7, he launched American air power against the Taliban regime that harbors prime suspect Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network.
There is a learning curve in any partnership, a period of trial and error to calibrate the strategy. War plans depend on the capabilities of the enemy, the difficulty of the terrain and the effectiveness of the forces to be thrown into battle. Here, the Taliban has been a fiercer opponent than expected. The terrain is a nightmare of distant mountains and rugged wastelands. And the Northern Alliance, the best American ally on the ground–really, the only one thus far–is flawed by a history of human rights abuses, bickering warlords and a diverse makeup of rival clans: ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.
It’s taken U.S. forces time to bridge the cultural divide and learn to work with the alliance. Secretary of State Colin Powell noted to a group of editorial writers last week that this war melds together allies, cultures and technologies seemingly from different centuries. It blends the U.S. and British might of “a First World air force” with Northern Alliance ground troops, which Powell described as “a Fourth World force–not even Third World, Fourth World. They have weapons, but they also charge into battle on horses, waving sabers over their heads.”
After only five weeks, it seems churlish to have expected well-coordinated attacks and military precision, let alone major victories. In fact, though, Bush’s generals may have pulled off a major coup before both Ramadan and winter set in. Coordinating U.S. air strikes with alliance troop and tank advances, the anti-Taliban forces appear to have secured a strategic foothold in the north, opened a crucial road link with Uzbekistan and sent the Taliban into retreat, at least for now. That could provide both a staging area for future strikes against the Taliban and a ground route to get humanitarian aid to starving Afghans.
The weekend’s successes also make it clear that bombing is a means to an end. By destroying Taliban defenses and attacking its troop strongholds, U.S. air might cleared the way for the Northern Alliance advances. Only a month ago, the alliance had failed to take Mazar-e Sharif. This time, it succeeded.
The U.S. had wanted to put the Northern Alliance on hold until it could develop a so-called southern strategy and pull together the makings of a broad-based, post-Taliban government made up of all Afghan tribes–especially the Pashtuns, who comprise the largest ethnic group and the ethnicity from which many Taliban members are drawn. When it became clear that effort wasn’t coming together, the Pentagon brushed aside doubts about the Northern Alliance and unleashed B-52s to carpet-bomb front-line Taliban positions. That strategy now has Taliban forces on the run, pursued by U.S. warplanes and Northern Alliance fighters.
On the diplomatic front, Bush marshaled support at the United Nations over the weekend for the war against terror, laying down the new challenge to the international community: “Every nation has a stake in this cause. As we meet, the terrorists are planning more murder, perhaps in my country or perhaps in yours.”
In every war, there are difficulties, doubts and dangers. In this war, with terrorists threatening more attacks on Americans, waging the battle half-heartedly is not an option.
No part of that battle thus far has been as controversial–in this country and overseas–as the heavy U.S. bombing of Taliban positions. It would be wrong to say there won’t be difficult days ahead; one weekend’s successes are only a beginning.
But by flushing out Taliban fighters and opening the way for the Northern Alliance, the bombing strategy now becomes part of a bigger picture. This is the way to break down Taliban resistance and get this conflict over with as quickly as possible.
