By Rupert Cornwell
The Independent, UK, 27 October 2001
The America-led military campaign in Afghanistan is at risk of losing momentum, with the Taliban regime showing no sign of buckling because of the bombing or imploding from within, and winter threatening to bring operations by the forces of the opposition Northern Alliance to a halt.
As the air campaign approached the end of a third week, US warplanes again battered targets in Kabul and entrenched Taliban positions north of the capital. But after the initial aerial photographs showing spectacular hits on fixed targets, progress has become almost invisible, and the mood of senior American officials has turned sharply more downbeat.
Not long ago, a Pentagon spokesman talked about having "eviscerated" the Taliban's capacity to resist. Now General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, talks only of events proceeding according to plan.
"Success is yet to be determined, but we think we're having some success," he said, the day after Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, publicly warned that despite its best efforts, the US might never lay hands on Osama bin Laden.
In the past, the harsh Afghan winter has always closed by November the annual instalments of the five-year civil war between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, and is likely to do so again now, despite increased support for the insurgents from the US and Russia.
The Muslim holy month of Ramadan is also about to complicate matters. If, as seems likely, no decisive breakthrough comes before Ramadan begins in mid-November, Washington has left no doubt that it will continue the bombing – at the risk of alienating the moderate Arab and Islamic world, and placing extra strain on leaders there who are uneasily lined up in the US-led coalition.
At home too, the longer the bombing goes on without achieving dramatic visible results, the greater will be the difficulty of holding public opinion, as the inevitable instances of "collateral damage" to innocent civilians multiply.
This week, Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the US risked being perceived as a "hi-tech bully" if it did not shift the emphasis of the campaign from the air to operations on the ground. The use of "submunitions" – in other words the infamous cluster bombs which pose a particular risk to civilians and children – will only reinforce this feeling.
All along, from President George Bush down, the administration has stressed that the war against terrorism could last for years.
But that did not dampen public expectations that American military might would swiftly bring about victory in the first stage of the war, the toppling of the Taliban regime.
As USA Today wrote yesterday: "Clear tactical successes will be needed both to retain public support and keep a war that will be very difficult to manage focused on its core objectives, to destroy the terrorists' networks and make them enemies to their own people."
But the most visible tactical success this week has gone to the Taliban, with the capture and apparent execution of the prominent resistance leader Abdul Haq. For all the US bombing of Taliban positions north of Kabul and elsewhere, the offensive of opposition Northern Alliance troops seems to have ground to a halt – both against the capital and against the town of Mazar-i-Sharif and its strategically important airfield.
There is also scant evidence of defections by moderate elements within the Taliban, which the US had been hoping would undermine the Islamic regime from within.
Reports from Pakistan suggest that even anti-Taliban tribal leaders are not taking the Western bait, and one intelligence official described US hopes to that effect as "hopelessly naïve".
If the failure to unite the squabbling factions behind an alternative government to succeed the Taliban – assuming it is overthrown – is anything to go by, the signs are that the US is about to get involved in a long entanglement in Afghanistan which the administration has warned of all along.
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Citation: Rupert Cornwell. "The bombing continues, but the loss of momentum is worrying America," The Independent, UK, 27 October 2001.
Original URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=101715
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