U.S. News & World Report October 12, 2001
Fight to the Finish
By Richard J. Newman; Mark Mazzetti; Kevin Whitelaw
It was an oddly humble opening to what President Bush declared a must-win military campaign. Even as American warplanes were carpet-bombing the troops loyal to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers and wiping out their headquarters with precision weapons, military leaders in Washington were dampening expectations for the newly launched war against terrorists and those who harbor them. "It's unlikely that the airstrikes will rock the Taliban back on their heels," warned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Even the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, seemed aware that the early results would be underwhelming. "The true measure of effectiveness . . . will not necessarily be in numerical terms," he cautioned. "Regardless of the pounds of munitions or the scope of the targets, [we] began . . . setting the conditions for future operations." That's not lack of confidence. But it's a sure sign that the Pentagon is indeed fighting a new kind of war. In contrast to the "overwhelming force" mantra popularized by Colin Powell when he was the Pentagon's top general during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, military leaders now are espousing an incremental approach to the very thorny problem of wiping out far-flung terrorist networks. In that light, this week's air attacks on Afghanistan were a mere curtain-raiser for a main event that could be lengthy and unpredictable. "We have plans to contract or expand this," says a senior Pentagon official. "It depends on what kinds of targets emerge."
The opening days of the campaign highlight the gray areas. In part, it began like a small-scale model of conventional military operations in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and over Serbia in 1999. At about 12:30 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, October 7--evening in Afghanistan--Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from ships in the Arabian Sea began slamming into the Taliban's air defense sites and command-and-control facilities. The objective: to blind the Taliban's meager air defenses and disrupt their communications, allowing U.S. aircraft--including unarmed C-17 cargo jets carrying food packets for desperately hungry Afghans--to fly unthreatened over Afghanistan. Bombers and fighter jets followed up, targeting military installations and terrorist training facilities.
It was relatively easy work. The first night's strikes included just 31 targets, and they tapered off from there. Only 15 bombers and 25 shorter-range fighters were involved on Day 1. The attacks damaged every airfield throughout Afghanistan but one; 85 percent of the first day's targets were damaged or destroyed. Only one setback: As the attacks resumed the next night, four Afghan security guards were killed in an explosion that destroyed the office of a U.N. mine-clearing agency on the edge of Kabul, located close to a Taliban radio transmission tower that was targeted.
By Day 3, U.S. planes had free rein in the skies over Afghanistan, day and night. During the 1999 war against Serbia, by contrast, NATO bombed more than 50 targets on Day 1--and that was far fewer than military planners had wanted. The numbers increased from there, and even by the end of the war NATO had not fully knocked out Serbia's air defense system, forcing NATO planes to stay well above 10,000 feet to avoid surface-to-air missiles.
While early goals in Afghanistan did include going after "leadership targets"--offices or residences of ranking officials--Rumsfeld denied that the strikes were designed specifically to kill terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden or Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. And a senior Pentagon official tells U.S. News that no "bunker buster" bombs were used in the early strikes. Those are massive 5,000-pound bombs designed to drive through 50 feet or more of steel and concrete, such as would protect a buried and hardened bunker for VIPs, before exploding. If precise intelligence placed bin Laden in such a buried hide-out, bunker busters would be one of the first weapons military planners would reach for.
But the strikes did have other carefully scripted objectives meant to push quickly toward an endgame. B-1 and B-52 bombers, for instance, carpet-bombed garrisons and armored formations of the Taliban's "Arab brigade"--the well-trained fighters personally organized by bin Laden--near the city of Mazar-e Sharif, about 30 miles south of Afghanistan's border with Uzbekistan. The 500-pound iron "dumb bombs" dropped by the warplanes had a precise strategic objective: Soften Taliban forces for an offensive by Northern Alliance forces, their longtime foes, and begin to splinter allegiances within the Taliban itself. "Mazar-e Sharif is a key to the whole thing," a Pentagon official told U.S. News. "If Mazar-e Sharif falls, that would be the first domino."
The strategy goes like this: Mazar-e Sharif is the linchpin for the Taliban's control of most of northern Afghanistan. By bombing forces there, the Pentagon first hopes to drive Taliban troops that have been close to the Uzbek border back toward Mazar-e Sharif. That will relieve pressure on a nation it hopes will become a steadfast ally--and possibly open up entry points for U.S. ground troops that could stage raids from Uzbekistan, if the country grants permission. The goal also is to disrupt Taliban lines around Mazar-e Sharif itself, giving the Northern Alliance an opening. That's why the campaign also has included bombing raids near Herat, in western Afghanistan, which is a key way station for supplies heading from Taliban strongholds in the south to Mazar-e Sharif and other points north.
"What's in it for me?"
If the military campaign can help break the Taliban's hold on northern Afghanistan, it could begin to unravel the Taliban. "A lot of the tribes have the mentality of, 'What's in it for me?' " says the Pentagon official. "If you lose Mazar-e Sharif, then the southern tribes may try to negotiate a better deal"--presumably, with a different faction more sympathetic to U.S. interests. There are early signs of success. Intelligence reports suggest that Taliban forces in fact have been retreating from the Uzbek border toward Mazar-e Sharif, a sure sign that forces there are under stress.
What happens next appears to be something of an open question. Clearly, the Pentagon hopes to maintain the flexibility to do a range of different things. One much discussed option is to provide the Northern Alliance with different forms of aid ranging from weapons and combat training by Special Forces teams to close air support for military operations. But Pakistan, the most critical ally in the region, opposes military aid for the Northern Alliance. Accordingly, the Pentagon seems to be avoiding any direct or overt aid to the group. "We have not yet received any materiel, military supplies, or financial aid," complains Daoud Mir, a Washington-based spokesman for the opposition. He also says that the presence of U.S. special units and other covert units is limited inside Afghanistan.
Nonetheless, Pentagon planners hope the alliance will take its cue from airstrikes and show some initiative. "The United States is not inclined to be choosing outcomes in terms of who wins" a power struggle inside Afghanistan, says a senior defense official. "It is intrinsically obvious that things that hurt the Taliban will help the Northern Alliance."
There are also plans to deploy several battalions of U.S. ground troops to nearby countries, so that they would be on hand to carry out search-and-attack missions. That would happen if U.S. forces got highly reliable intelligence tips about where key figures such as bin Laden or his lieutenants were going to be at certain times. Raids would probably be led by the Pentagon's special operations forces (story, Page 16). But for any mission likely to involve combat with the Taliban's battle-hardened mujahideen, the special operators would most likely be backed up by dozens or hundreds of heliborne infantrymen. Some military experts feel that whatever special units are on the ground in Afghanistan may already be exposed to excessive danger, given the apparent lack of conventional troops who might bail them out if they got ambushed or boxed in by Taliban forces. "I probably never would have done what [the Pentagon] is doing in Afghanistan," says a former senior commander. "If you get into a real box problem you'd want a lot of force there."
Short or long.
Military leaders are hesitant to say it out loud, but there's also the possibility that the Taliban will crumble in short order as a combination of military strikes, political isolation, and financial stress ruptures the faction's cohesiveness. "Things are going to work out well here," predicts one upbeat senior military of-ficer. "The political and military infrastructure is so horribly weak that [the Taliban] will eventually collapse." If bin Laden were to survive the implosion of the Taliban, he would end up exposed and on the run--in other words, a ripe target for U.S. agents.
The prospects for a protracted campaign inside and over Afghanistan are more dismal. The complex orchestration of the first week's strikes illustrates some of the hardships of waging war against a landlocked country that is 250 miles from the nearest coastline and surrounded by countries worried about allying themselves with the wrong side. The B-1 and B-52 bombers that attacked Afghanistan flew from the island of Diego Garcia, more than 2,500 miles away in the Indian Ocean. B-2s flew all the way from their home station, Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. Fighter jets flying from the carriers USS Carl Vinson and USS Enterprise had to refuel in the air several times for missions that, in some cases, lasted nearly eight hours--some of the longest missions ever flown from carriers. "I'm sure they were wearing out their piddle bags," observed one senior officer at the Pentagon, referring to the artificial bladders pilots wear so they can urinate on long flights.
Such inconveniences are manageable for brief, intense bombing campaigns. But as the American-Afghan war drags on, the tyranny of distance will limit the amount of "loiter time" pilots can spend in the air over Afghanistan searching for the only targets left: "targets of opportunity." Those can be leaders whose convoys are spotted on short notice, military forces caught out in the open, or previously unknown targets that suddenly come to light. Trying to attack them with bombers that take five hours just to reach the theater means many opportunities will be lost.
A protracted campaign will also tax the U.S. military presence in key regions. Assigning two carriers to the Afghanistan operation has left the Persian Gulf without a carrier, for example. Such shortages would be easily solved if the Pentagon could base Air Force fighter jets at airfields in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. But those countries continue to waver when it comes to hosting U.S. combat forces. There were no Air Force fighter jets involved in the first week of strikes, for instance, because no nearby countries would host the short-range warplanes.
Limitations.
Ground options are similarly constrained by geopolitics and security concerns. Many military experts agree that unless the Taliban implodes or offers up bin Laden, it will take ground forces methodically combing Afghanistan to root out the terrorist and his henchmen. The mission would be nothing like the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that ended with an ignominious withdrawal in 1989. U.S. troops would not be defending territory or trying to install a new government, and would have an enormous technological advantage the Soviets didn't. "The only way the Army can get in trouble," asserts Thomas Houlahan of the William R. Nelson Institute at James Madison University, "is if it pussyfoots around."
Problem is, the Army may have no choice but to pussyfoot around. Doing the mission right, says Owen Cote of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would require four or five brigades of air-mobile troops--about 25,000 soldiers--arrayed throughout Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Pakistan. That would provide all the firepower needed to pull off raids of any conceivable size throughout Afghanistan. But so far, the countries in question aren't buying it. The Pentagon is improvising, sending the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk into the region--with only part of its usual compliment of aircraft--to function as a staging platform for ground troops and helicopters. Two thousand marines in an amphibious ready group afloat in the Arabian Sea add additional punch. But any such forces would still have to regroup and fuel up somewhere inside Pakistan before they entered Afghanistan. While remaining noncommittal on the prospect of ground operations, some at the Pentagon believe arrangements will fall into place as needed. "We've made some real progress with basing," says one senior officer, although he adds that "we have some restraints on the nature and type of operation we can conduct."
Various plans are also in the works at the Pentagon for the next phase of the war against terrorism--after Afghanistan. One senior planner describes the "six nodes" of terrorism--Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Libya, plus Afghanistan. Some of those countries--most notably Iraq--have well-known programs to develop chemical and biological weapons. "I don't see how we can leave any of that intact," says the planner. The Bush administration this week notified the United Nations that it reserves the right to carry out military operations against other nations that condone or tolerate terrorists. The "Cold War" against terrorism, as Rumsfeld has called it, may get hotter yet.
Targeting the Taliban
Afghanistan is not a "target-rich environment," but U.S.-led air attacks starting October 7 pounded many of the command centers, airfields, air defenses, troop concentrations, and terrorist training camps the Taliban controls. Launched from distant airbases and from ships in the Arabian Sea, the airstrikes may improve the fortunes of the opposition Northern Alliance, which is fighting for control of Afghanistan.
Sources: Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, GlobalSecurity.org, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Mountain High Maps
Copyright 2001 U.S. News & World Report
