Opinion - Leader Page Articles

One year of the war on terror

By T. Sreedhar

It is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. war on terrorism is going to be a prolonged affair.

ON OCTOBER 7, the U.S. war on terrorism, Operation Enduring Freedom, will complete one year. Already, people such as Anthony Davis, one of the few journalists covering Afghanistan for a number of years, have written about how the U.S. has won the war, in Jane's Intelligence Review (February 2002). However, the results achieved in this war so far as compared to the objectives set in September 2001 show that the U.S. has had only limited success. The U.S. was able to capture some important members of the Taliban-Al Qaeda network, managed to destroy the combine's infrastructure in Afghanistan and to a limited extent managed to stop the flow of finances to the terrorist network. Even by U.S. accounts, only around 20 per cent of Taliban-Al Qaeda operatives were killed in action and another 20 per cent captured. This means that 60 per cent of the network's total estimated strength, including the leaders Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, is still at large. Above all, the U.S. was able to remove the Taliban from power and establish a broad-based Government under Hamid Karzai. No doubt, this is a major achievement.

Where have things gone wrong for the U.S.? Why is the campaign against terrorism taking so long? At three levels, the U.S. strategy to combat terrorism and violence of the Taliban-Al Qaeda variety seems to have run into difficulties. First, the U.S. started its air campaign in Afghanistan as a localised phenomenon. In spite of India's extensive inputs, the Bush administration refused to target Pakistan as part of its strategy for combating terrorism. Some in the U.S. strategic community argued that Pakistan was no doubt part and parcel of the problem but was also a part of the solution. This automatically resulted in the Taliban-Al Qaeda leadership and cadres finding safe havens in Pakistan. It is a well-documented fact now that as the U.S. campaign moved from north to south Afghanistan, it gave enough time to the Taliban-Al Qaeda cadres to cross quickly into Pakistan using the porous border.

The U.S. dependence on Pakistani armed forces proved disastrous. After the Taliban-Al Qaeda cadres and leaders managed to escape from Kunduz in November 2001 they did not look back. From January 2002 onwards, they started regular attacks mostly on Western targets and occasionally Pakistani targets. Apparently, the U.S. underestimated the Pakistani armed forces' involvement with the Taliban-Al Qaeda network.

By end December 2001, it became clear to Indian watchers of the Afghanistan-Pakistan developments that the U.S. dependence on Pakistani armed forces was increasing day by day. When the U.S. acquisition of 54,000 acres on a 99-year lease in the NWFP and Baluchistan became public knowledge, it was clear that Washington was going to establish a base and direct the operations against the Taliban-Al Qaeda forces with the help of Pakistan's armed forces. The developments in Pakistan since March this year indicate that whenever the U.S. expresses its displeasure at a slowdown in Pakistani efforts, a minion of the Taliban-Al Qaeda is captured by the Pakistani authorities and deported to the U.S. This fine balancing act enabled Pakistan to delink itself from the original charge that it was part of the Taliban-Al Qaeda network. The U.S. obsession with the Taliban-Al Qaeda network also enabled Islamabad to pursue its own agenda against the Hamid Karzai Government in Kabul which it perceives as being inimical to its interests.

At another level, the U.S. never made secret its involvement in the establishment of an interim Government in Kabul. Though Mr. Karzai is an excellent choice, at a popular level it gave an impression that he is a "lackey" of the Americans. The loose federal structure under which Afghanistan was always administered suddenly got a centralised authority. With the result that the expected cooperation from the provinces was not forthcoming for Kabul. This automatically resulted in the Taliban-Al Qaeda cadres moving freely in southern Afghanistan in the name of freedom from an "imposed government". The Taliban-Al Qaeda leadership is cleverly exploiting the traditional independence of the Afghans to its advantage.

The U.S. also underestimated the capabilities and linkages of Osama. As one observer pointed out, the relationship between Osama's family and the Saudi royal family is over six decades old and the former's business interests are spread over the entire Islamic world. Such long-standing relationships cannot be snapped easily. The U.S. perception that a crime against Americans is a crime against humanity will not sell in the Arab world. The Arab intelligentsia is well aware of the fact that in spite of their best efforts, the U.S. and its allies' dependence on Persian Gulf crude oil still continues. According to some observers, the U.S. and its allies' crude oil imports from the Gulf region still constitute the critical component of their energy requirements. Therefore, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait cannot be treated like Libya in the mid-1980s.

Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. war on terrorism is going to be a prolonged affair. The spectacular results achieved through Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991 by using air power cannot be completely effective in a war like the one being fought against the Taliban-Al Qaeda. The U.S. deployment of the Pakistani army in hunting down Taliban-Al Qaeda operatives and leaders, and the choice of Turkey to lead the International Security Assistance Force, clearly shows that the Americans do not want to risk any casualties. Interestingly, both countries were extremely friendly with the Taliban regime. Will they be able to deliver what the U.S. wants? Every country in Afghanistan's neighbourhood including India seems to have reservations about this U.S. approach.

At the end of the year, a balance-sheet of the U.S. war on terrorism will show that Operation Enduring Freedom has not succeeded in achieving its primary objective of capturing the main persons behind the September 11attacks — Osama and Mullah Omar. Even their large families could not be touched by the U.S.

The U.S. is slowly realising that the war on terrorism cannot be fought with fighter aircraft and armoured personnel carriers. It is the ground operations that matter. The perceptions of the people also need to be tackled. Air dropping of food packets, a strategy adopted in the beginning of war and given up immediately afterwards, may work in a conventional war but not in a war against terrorism. It is becoming increasingly clear that the U.S. war on terrorism has to be handled politically with a certain amount of dexterity and subtlety. America cannot be abrasive.

All this has resulted in the war on terrorism losing its momentum and to the U.S. suspecting its own shadow. At this point, it appears that peace and stability in Afghanistan are a long way off.

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