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 uckle
down for the winter: It looks like we're in for the long haul in
Afghanistan, at least until the spring.
It's possible
that we'll get a lucky break and the Northern Alliance (or the United
Front, as it prefers to be called) will roll through Mazar-e Sharif,
where it reportedly has made some gains, and Kabul in the next few
weeks. But there is nothing to guarantee it.
We are suffering
now from one of the downsides of waging a war by proxy. The advantage
is that you minimize your own risk. We can do our bit from 15,000
feet or even higher (or even 65,000 feet, in the case of the "Global
Hawk" reconnaissance plane). But the price for that relative
safety is having limited control over what actually happens on the
ground.
Here's Rear
Adm. John D. Stufflebeem on the likelihood of an NA assault in coming
days: "I have heard reports that they may be ready to move,
but until they do, I think that it's still a bit suppositional on
our part."
Now, maybe
the U.S. has all this exquisitely wired and just isn't telling us,
but all signs are that we are at the mercy of a rebel force:
1) that by
its own account is disastrously under-supplied. The NA's impressive
spokesman Haron Amin pleads for more arms at every opportunity;
2) that by its own account was rendered an awful blow by the assassination
of the charismatic and talented Ahmed Massoud. His replacement,
Gen. Fahim, bizarrely didn't salute his troops upon reviewing them
yesterday, according to the New York Times (although I'm
told he may have just been showing deference to President Burhanuddin
Rabbani, who was also on the reviewing grounds);
3) that, judging
by all the conflicting public statements, can't decide whether it's
in a position to roll up the Taliban in a decisive offensive almost
immediately, or is struggling just to survive with soldiers who
lack boots;
4) that can
be a sketchy bunch. We are, for instance, relying on Gen. Dostum
to take Mazar-e Sharif. Here is how Ahmed Rashid describes Dostum
in his excellent Taliban:
"he had, at one time or another, allied himself with everyone...
and betrayed everyone with undisguised aplomb. He had also been
on every country's payroll receiving funds from Russia, Uzbekistan,
Iran, Pakistan, and lately Turkey. In 1995 he managed to be on the
payroll of both Iran and Pakistan, then at daggers drawn over the
Taliban."
At least the U.S. appears to have gotten its thinking straight.
Initially we couldn't decide whether we wanted to bomb the Taliban
front lines or not, so we were suffering from a strategic flaw.
Now that we have taken that decision, we are having more mundane
operational difficulties — namely, bombing the Taliban lines
accurately.
Secretary Rumsfeld
maintains that lately we are having much better luck at it, now
that we have special-operations troops involved in the targeting.
More special-ops troops are on the way, and winter notwithstanding,
one can only assume that time is not on the Taliban's side.
The only reason
it would be is if the international coalition were fraying. But
in the places that matter, in the immediate neighborhood, support
for the U.S. appears to be shoring up. Tajikistan is going to let
us use former Soviet bases, and Pakistani President Musharraf is
looking better rather than worse (which makes sense — Musharraf
can't back off from his support for the U.S. now, or he'll get the
worst of both worlds).
So, in short,
if we were starting from scratch maybe we would write a different
campaign plan, one that relied on a massive shock-bombing campaign
from the beginning, one that made more extensive use of American
ground troops. But, given the hand we are playing, there is not
much we can do now except to bomb, arm the NA, and wait — perhaps
until spring.
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