[iwar] [fc:The.New.Rules.Of.Engagement]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-29 07:16:37
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From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
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Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2001 07:16:37 -0800 (PST)
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Time
November 5, 2001
The New Rules Of Engagement
War always has surprises. As the Taliban proves a durable foe, TIME's Romesh
Ratnesar tells us what to watch for
For anyone who has been clinging to the notion that America can win this war
the easy way, the fate of Abdul Haq should serve as a powerful antidote. Few
knew how to fight in the rugged Afghan steppes and summits better than Haq,
a legendary mujahedin guerrilla who lost his right foot to a land mine while
helping rout the Soviets. He left Afghanistan during the post-Soviet power
struggle and renounced politics after his wife and son were murdered in his
Peshawar, Pakistan, home. But he recently returned to the Afghan frontier,
hoping to enlist defectors and warlords in an anti-Taliban southern
alliance. Because he was Pashtun--the dominant tribe of southern Afghanistan
and the Taliban itself--Haq was a precious asset to the U.S., which
desperately wants an erosion of Taliban authority in the south and east,
where American commandos have launched the hunt for Osama bin Laden. 
Last week Haq and 19 lightly armed aides slipped into Taliban territory to
persuade fighters to rise up against the regime. But informers trailed him.
For two days the Taliban staked out the home where Haq was staying. Early
Friday morning Taliban troops surrounded him on three sides. Cut off in the
Khyber Pass, Haq placed a call on his satellite phone to his nephew in
Pakistan; word of Haq's distress soon reached the cia. As Haq tried to
escape on horseback, the U.S. sent an unmanned Predator surveillance plane
to shoot a Hellfire missile at his pursuers. It missed. Soon after the
Taliban captured Haq. He was taken to Kabul and executed as a U.S. spy. 
For the American military, Haq's demise was a humbling end to a humbling
week. Since the beginning of the campaign, the President's men have reminded
Americans that this "new" kind of conflict could end up being as protracted
as the cold war. And yet for a while the war seemed to be following a faster
script--precision bombs clearing the way for a quick ground operation. After
less than two weeks, the Pentagon was claiming that its bombs had
"eviscerated" the Taliban's military capability. But last week that optimism
faded. Dreams of a hit-and-run war gave way to the reality of a long
twilight struggle that seems sure to drag into the Afghan winter. After more
than 3,000 American bombs, the Taliban still has plenty of fight left in it;
Taliban troops have thwarted a Northern Alliance offensive at
Mazar-i-Sharif; civilian deaths are climbing; and many coalition
partners--most crucially Pakistan--have grown impatient. 
The war is only three weeks old, and U.S. and British officials insist
things are going as expected. "You always hope for a lucky punch," says an
Air Force commander. "But you usually don't get lucky, so you just keep
pressing on." Pentagon officials have said some ground operations aimed at
crushing the Taliban and al-Qaeda may not get under way until next spring.
"We're not setting timetables," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said
Thursday. In a remarkable admission, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said, "I
am a bit surprised at how doggedly they're hanging onto power. We definitely
need to have patience," he added. "This is going to be a long, long
campaign." 
Even in a new kind of war against an elusive adversary, some basic rules of
engagement have emerged. Knowing them won't guarantee victory, but it may
help us get through the dangerous months ahead. 
Rule 1: Dig In--This Is Going To Take Some Time 
American air power can do plenty of damage, but Afghan experts say the
Taliban's morale won't crack until it suffers heavy battlefield losses. So
long as the U.S. limits its ground operations to commando raids, the job of
inflicting those casualties lies with the Northern Alliance. Alliance
commanders have provided their strategy for toppling the regime to anyone
who will listen: once American bombs softened Taliban forces, the Alliance
planned to make its move into the key northern outposts of Mazar-i-Sharif,
Kunduz and Taliqan, cutting a swath through the heart of Taliban country. As
the Alliance rolled back the Taliban in the north, the thinking went, the
certainty of defeat would produce mass defections from the Taliban's ranks,
and the regime would implode. 
Time for Plan B. The first major ground battle, near Mazar-i-Sharif, took
place last Monday, when hundreds of Northern Alliance troops serving under
two commanders, Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum and Tajik general Mullah Ustad
Mohammed Atta, swept toward the city and the 20,000 entrenched Taliban
troops protecting it. The Alliance forces advanced to within 12 miles of
Mazar, but a fierce Taliban counterattack led to savage street battles;
Alliance forces managed to hold their front line but failed to advance much
further. It's unlikely that the Alliance will march on Mazar anytime soon.
The Taliban's antiaircraft weapons and control of the airport make it hard
for the Northern Alliance to replenish ammunition, blankets and food.
"Dostum is fighting with his bare hands," says a senior aide based in
Uzbekistan. "He simply doesn't have enough bullets." 
What the Alliance did have for the first time was heavy U.S. bombs dumped
onto Taliban front lines. But those strikes were still measured, and
Alliance frustration is growing. "The longer you wait, the more the Taliban
can figure out how to continue life with constant air strikes," says a
cavalry commander near Mazar. 
And yet for all its showy impatience, much of the Alliance doesn't look
war-ready. Near Khoja Bahauddin, on the Taliqan front, the Alliance must
move its tanks across a steep-banked river before it can even think of
mounting an offensive. That's not to say an Alliance breakthrough is
impossible, especially if American strikes against the Taliban pick up. But
even the most confident Alliance soldiers say it won't happen soon. "War is
in our blood," says Safaullah, a fighter in Dasht-i-Qala. "We'll fight for
centuries if we have to." 
Rule 2: That House Is Really A Weapons Depot 
The Pentagon's most optimistic estimate is that 85% of American bombs and
missiles have hit their targets. But that means that 450 or more may have
gone astray, regularly nailing civilian structures and residential
neighborhoods. The military has struggled to explain some of its mistakes.
Rumsfeld flatly denied a Taliban report that a U.S. warhead landed on a
hospital in Herat. But the next day he sent his spokeswoman out to concede
that "it is possible" a 1,000-lb. bomb from a U.S. F-18 accidentally damaged
the hospital. The U.S. has also acknowledged dropping two 500-pounders in a
residential area north of Kabul. On Friday American warplanes blitzing Kabul
successfully leveled a target selected by Pentagon planners. But the target
turned out to be a Red Cross warehouse--the same one the U.S. had hit by
mistake 10 days earlier. 
All of which has damaged whatever credibility America might have had among
the ordinary Afghans it hopes to convert. The Taliban, like the Iraqis and
Serbs before them, have exaggerated civilian casualties while helping create
more of them by positioning artillery near mosques and schools--erecting
human shields and daring the U.S. to hit them. Daud Khan, 28, a refugee
coming out of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, told Time that the regime's
forces have moved into residential quarters of the city, occupied houses and
put antiaircraft guns on the roofs. Another 45 camouflaged truckloads of
weapons have been moved into the mountains. 
Rumsfeld has pledged "to do everything humanly possible ... to let the world
know that this is not against the Afghan people," but he has little chance
of winning that argument. Many rural Afghans will believe anything the
Taliban tells them about the U.S.--including last week's accusation that
American planes were dropping chemical weapons. The only way for the U.S. to
counter such claims may be to slow the aerial campaign and avoid borderline
targets altogether. The U.S. destroys about 1% of an enemy force for each
day of bombing; by that yardstick, there remain many Taliban targets to
hit--if the pilots can find them. But the targets' mobility, invisibility
and dwindling numbers mean they can't be destroyed at once. A British
defense official says that in coming stages of the campaign, days may pass
in which no bombs fall. 
Rule 3: Watch Your Back 
There may be one compelling reason to scale back air strikes: doing so could
help contain anti-American unrest in Pakistan, a war aim that will become
vital as the thrust of the campaign shifts to ground operations by special
forces. U.S. commandos staging from bases in Pakistani territory have
already faced mortal danger. When two Chinook helicopters landed at the
Panjgur airport in southern Pakistan after retrieving a downed U.S. chopper,
aviation sources tell Time, they were met with a swarm of bullets from
pro-Taliban, Pakistani irregulars who were guarding the airport. The
Chinooks returned fire for several minutes before roaring off. The ambush
was extinguished by Pakistani military forces. 
Since the firefight, the U.S. has conducted its operations in Pakistan with
more discretion; at the airstrip in Jacobabad, U.S. aircraft now land only
at night, without the aid of runway lights. American servicemen on
motorcycles race up the strip to guide the gunships in. That has added
another hazard to the difficult job of locating bin Laden and the Taliban
leadership and going for their throats. British intelligence believes the
bombing campaign has flushed bin Laden out of his hiding places, providing
opportunities for prying eyes to fix his location and sell the information
to the U.S. The forces arrayed against him are growing; last week Britain
committed 200 Royal Marine commandos to participate in search-and-destroy
ground raids. 
The top British military commander, Michael Boyce, said last week that
commando operations could go on for weeks at a time to give Western forces
the chance to gather intelligence on their prey. But the longer special
forces are on the ground inside Afghanistan, the bigger the bull's-eye on
their backs. The special-ops raid staged near Kandahar last month nearly
ended in disaster when, as Time reported last week, U.S. commandos were
ambushed by Taliban guerrillas. A central piece of the U.S. strategy--to
grease the gates of entry into southern Afghanistan by turning tribal
leaders and warlords against the Taliban--may have died along with Haq. His
capture also highlighted the treachery of the Taliban's network of spies in
Pakistan, who will try to tip off holy warriors in Kandahar to pending U.S.
raids. In American war rooms, that reality--and the memories of Beirut and
Mogadishu--haunts military strategists. As long as the public is patient and
intelligence is thin, the Pentagon will wait on ordering up big commando
missions that might produce heavy American casualties. 
Rule 4: Gird For Winter 
By late November, frigid winds will be blowing south from Siberia, and the
mountain paths of the Hindu Kush will be buried in snow. The main supply
route for Northern Alliance fighters north of Kabul will ice over. Working
in the Alliance's favor: the Taliban like the cold even less. "They are from
the south, so they are not used to winter fighting," says Noorahmad Atay, a
commander in the Alliance-held Keshem district. "We are cold-weather people,
so we can fight without a problem." 
The U.S. Army has for years trained to fight in winter conditions. But no
matter how inured to the elements a fighting force may be, everything is
harder in the cold. Bundled-up troops have difficulty moving and hearing
instructions, and the cushion of snow can smother the potency of munitions.
Soldiers barreling out of transport planes must prevent the condensation
that forms inside their rifle barrels from freezing; that could cause
weapons to burst when fired. 
The weather poses particular problems for special-ops forces, who rely on
low-altitude helicopter and warplane support that could get scuppered by
storms. But one of the key methods the U.S. military will use to hunt down
cave-dwelling terrorists will be helped by the chill. U.S. choppers are
equipped with systems especially designed to detect heat--including warm air
coming from occupied caves. Once such a cave is detected, F-15Es will be
dispatched to collapse it by dropping 5,000-lb. EGBU-28 bunker-busting bombs
on them, or by firing AGM-130 Maverick missiles into them. Inclement weather
may offer an added bonus: if a storm strands bin Laden's traveling convoy in
a mountain hideaway for even a day too long, the U.S.'s heat-seeking
gunships may have time to take him out. 
Rule 5: Get A Better Megaphone 
In one theater the U.S. is already losing big: the battle for the support of
despairing people in Afghanistan, massed along the Pakistan border and
shouting in the streets of the world's Islamic capitals. Last week Pakistani
President Pervez Musharraf called for a prompt end to military action but
also said his government will cooperate with the U.S. "until the objectives
are achieved." His government's inability to contain jihadist fervor was
underscored last Tuesday, when 22 Pakistani volunteers were killed in a
bombing raid on Taliban forces in Kabul. 
Even so, the Musharraf government does not appear in danger of collapse; and
despite the possibility of a protracted war, the 140-nation coalition
against terrorism is holding. An immediate concern is Muslim disgruntlement
about the U.S.'s conducting operations during the holy month of Ramadan.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that the U.S. will see where
it stands when Ramadan begins, Nov. 17. In private, everyone knows the
fighting won't stop. "It's a hedge," says a senior official. "We're not
going to give them a free pass on Ramadan." 
That's understandable--Muslim armies have often waged war during
Ramadan--but hedging won't win the propaganda war. The West is trying to
make up ground; the British government has booked Arabic-speaking officials
to appear on al-Jazeera and other TV outlets, and last week the U.S.
enlisted former ambassador to Syria Chris Ross, who speaks Arabic, to do
similar interviews. But the American President may need to pitch in as well.
St. Andrews University terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp offers a suggestion:
Bush should master a few Arabic words and broadcast a message to Muslims
before Ramadan, the way John Kennedy melted cold war suspicions in 1963 by
declaring "Ich bin ein Berliner." It may not work as well this time. But if
the U.S. hopes to keep the world on board for the long haul, it's as good a
place as any to start. 
--Reported by Hannah Beech/ Keshem, Hannah Bloch and Terry McCarthy/
Islamabad, Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/ Washington, Mitch Frank/ New
York, Ghulam Hasnain/ Chaman, J.F.O McAllister/ London, Tim McGirk/ Quetta
and Alex Perry/ Tashkent 

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