[iwar] [fc:Policy.Planning.in.the.Fog.of.War]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-27 11:07:52
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Policy Planning in the Fog of War
World, October 27, 2001 [ 12:38 ]
By Ariel Cohen, Analyst

WASHINGTON. The principal challenge of the anti-terrorism coalition is to develop 
and present a clear vision of power relations in post-war Afghanistan. Such a vision 
must accommodate the intra-Afghan, as well as regional, balance of power, and include 
interests of both Pushtuns and non-Pushtuns, and their state sponsors. Such political 
arrangement will have to take into account the interests of Central Asian states, 
which are worried about the exportation of radical Islamic ideology and drugs from 
its Southern neighbor. Finally, it has to address interests and demands of regional 
powers: Iran, Russia, Pakistan, and China. Military and policy planners are not there 
yet, at least not so far.

BACKGROUND: As the ground war is picking up pace in the mountains of Afghanistan, 
the U.S., its allies and the region as a whole is facing long-term challenges of 
political, military, economic, and humanitarian nature. Their proposed solutions 
are as contradictory and wrought with risks, as the regional politics in and around 
Afghanistan have been for centuries. But if sustainable solutions are not found - 
and quickly - the United States may bog down in the mountains of Afghanistan for 
months, if not years to come, while new terrorist challenges are likely to flare 
up at home and elsewhere in the Middle East. And Russia and China may find such a 
presence annoying, to say the least.

"Russia is facing two challenges," says a Washington policy maker with experience 
in the former Soviet Union. "The U.S. is staying in Central Asia indefinitely - or 
U.S. getting a bloody nose and pulling out of Central Asia, leaving Moscow to hold 
the bag. Both scenarios are untenable for Moscow." 

However, while the harsh winter is quickly approaching, the U.S. has not presented 
any vision for a post-Taliban Afghanistan, much less a vision which would be acceptable 
for the ethnically diverse Afghans, and for the regional powers - Pakistan, Russia 
and Iran. Already two weeks into the war, politicians and military commanders in 
Washington and in the region are facing confusion and economic challenges almost 
as insurmountable as the towering peaks of the Hindu-Kush and the Pamir mountains.

For now, the principal challenge facing the U.S. is the military situation on the 
ground. The U.S. has a tendency to prosecute war unilaterally, relying on the coalition 
for political support, not military action. And most coalition-building measures 
are focused on the Arab Middle East and Pakistan, not the vital Central Asian dimension. 
Decisionmakers in Russia, the Central Asian states, and the Northern Alliance often 
complain that they are treated as "poor relatives," who are not consulted on strategy 
or major operational planning. And indeed the Northern Alliance's military potential 
is poor and needs a major upgrade. 

Since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the Northern Alliance promised 
military advances against the Taliban. However, its attempts to take the strategic 
town of Mazar-i-Sharif and gain full control of the Bagram air base near Kabul have 
so far failed due to the Alliance's weakness and because of political calculations 
in Washington and Islamabad. The lack of desire to see the northerners taking Kabul 
prevented the U.S. air force from pounding Taliban positions hard enough to allow 
the numerically weaker Alliance to conduct a major offensive against Taliban forces.

Northern commanders are reportedly split in their attitudes toward the 86-year old 
King Zahir Shah and to the U.S. military operation. This is hardly surprising as 
many of the commanders spent years in Tehran and are presumed to have good contacts 
with the Iranian government. Some commanders scoff at Zahir Shah's potential leadership 
role, while others fall prey to the Taliban propaganda to unite and fight the infidels. 
For example, according to the October 19 issue of the usually well-informed Moscow 
paper, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, a veteran of the anti-Soviet war in 
Afghanistan and leader of a religious group, Ittihad e-Islam, has defected to the 
Taliban, and was bombarded by the U.S. air force on October 10-11. 

IMPLICATIONS: Unless the U.S. becomes willing to train, supply, and support the 
Northern Alliance, the occupation of important parts of Afghanistan by anti-Taliban 
forces, and significant local support for the U.S. special forces will remain impossible. 
Such a position will tend to impede and frustrate Washington's primary war aims in 
Afghanistan: the destruction of Al-Qaeda and capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. 
But the predicament of the U.S. military planners is also understandable: the Pushtun 
plurality in Afghanistan will not accept the Northern Alliance capturing Kabul and 
taking the country by force. Moreover, the Alliance appears not to have the power 
to achieve a decisive victory in the battlefield. The Central Asian states and Russia 
are watching the international political maneuvering around Afghanistan with apprehension. 
Russia is of two minds. It wants to support its client, the Northern Alliance, but 
Moscow's top leadership also realizes that the coalition needs to accommodate the 
Pushtuns as well. 

Russia would be willing to settle for a neutral Afghanistan, provided the Taliban's 
export of its witch's brew of militant Islam and drugs is stopped. The Taliban currently 
supports radical and violent organizations in Central Asia, such as the Islamic Movement 
of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has pledged to depose President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, 
an ex-communist and a secular, authoritarian leader who recently has improved his 
relations with Moscow. The U.S.-Pakistani talk about integrating "moderate" Taliban 
into the post-war Afghanistan's political structure makes Moscow see red. The United 
Nations is not helping either. Its envoys, remembering the organization's resounding 
failures in Somalia and the Balkans, have already made the UN's lack of interest 
in mediating and policing an Afghani peace settlement quite clear. One possible solution, 
declaring the deposed king Zahir Shah, an ethnic Pushtun living in exile in Rome 
a constitutional monarch, and having him assemble Loya Jirga (a grand tribal conclave) 
is still under discussion. However, U.S. diplomats seem pessimistic about the chances 
of having such a congress before the Taliban leadership is eliminated. 

CONCLUSION: The United States must focus immediate and high level attention on two 
aspects of the war, one military and one diplomatic. The first is cobbling together 
a military force that can defeat the Taliban; and the second the creation of a political 
arrangement which can police the country after the war. On the diplomatic front, 
the U.S. needs to assemble a regional coalition which is capable of actively supporting 
Afghanistan's future federal government. In such an arrangement, Pakistan needs to 
give up its ambitions to export its own sphere of influence North. In addition, it's 
time to start thinking about sustainable economic, humanitarian and drug control 
aspects of the post-war arrangement in Afghanistan. This task, too, is not for the 
faint-hearted.

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