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Washington Post reports
today that the expected mass defections from the Taliban have
failed to materialize, which is a sign that the fundamental strategy
behind the U.S. air war in Afghanistan may be a failure.
The U.S. seemed
to expect a classic air-war free lunch: The very demonstration of
American firepower from the skies would prompt our adversaries to
buckle and then collapse.
This is the
ultimate in war as signal-sending, the signal being that "we
are so much more powerful than you that we don't even need to bother
to destroy you to achieve victory."
The Taliban
appears to be duly unimpressed.
Besides which,
all the factors that have traditionally motivated Afghan fighters
seem to be running the wrong way in this case, as an intelligence
official explains to the Post: "During the Afghan war
we used Islam, Pashtun nationalism, and Afghan history to drive
Afghans against foreign invaders. In the present situation, we can't
use any of them to trigger an intra-Pashtun coup against the Taliban."
This means
destroying the Taliban is the only option, as John McCain argues
in a delightfully Jacksonian op-ed in the Wall
Street Journal
today. But this brings us to what may be another strategic miscalculation.
We have been
depending on the Northern Alliance — or as it calls itself,
the United Front — to destroy the Taliban for us, with some
light U.S. air support. But this is beginning to look like delirious
wishful thinking.
There are reports
today that the Northern Alliance's effort to take Mazar-e Sharif
in the northwest has been a debacle, with its troops now pushed
40 miles back from the strategically key city.
This shouldn't
be surprising. The Northern Alliance for years was just in survival
mode, and then was able to mount something of a resistance to the
Taliban. But going on the offensive is an entirely different matter,
and short of a major infusion of arms — more than the Russians
are promising at the moment — it just won't happen.
In light of
this, there are several unavoidable choices for the U.S. The first
is the nature of our air campaign. If we really don't want to take
Mazar-e Sharif or Kabul quickly we can continue our light bombing
and wait until next year, as Brooklyn Dodger fans used to say.
But if we want
things to move quickly, the air campaign will have to be stepped
up, but then there will be still another choice.
If we want
the Northern Alliance to do the work on the ground, we will have
to provide them with a fairly large infusion of arms, one that will
almost amount to making its army anew. It will be an enormous logistical
task, and one that will prompt howls from the Pakistanis.
If we want
to avoid all that, the only other choice is to send U.S. troops
in on the ground to capture key cities and hold that which we consider
strategically essential.
It may just
be that the Taliban is on the verge of collapse and we don't know
it, in the same way that the Serbs were about to give way amidst
all the bitching about the air war in Kosovo.
But if not,
there is no avoiding these hard decisions — because there are
no free lunches, including in Afghanistan.
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