- Thousands of Troops Needed in Afghanistan -Experts
November 7, 2001 5:05 pm EST
By Charles AldingerWASHINGTON (Reuters) - Military experts predicted on Wednesday after a month of U.S. bombing that thousands of American and allied troops would be needed in a spring offensive to drive Afghanistan's ruling Taliban from power.
The experts spoke with Reuters as the Taliban's battle-hardened military and al Qaeda guerrillas of fugitive Osama bin Laden remained entrenched and defiant, raising key questions about the young war on terrorism in that rugged country.
How and when will the Taliban go, and at what cost?
Despite statements from Pentagon officials that anti-Taliban Northern Alliance forces were making some progress with support from U.S. bombs and special forces troops, the private analysts said Washington's dependence on the opposition force was misplaced.
"To expect the Northern Alliance to sweep through Afghanistan is daft. They have never been a credible military force," said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies in London.
"The Americans, Germans, British and others will use the winter to build up their forces and by early march have many, many thousands in the area to launch a conventional ground assault," Heyman said, adding that such a campaign need not be long and littered with allied casualties.
With weapons ranging from $1 million ship-fired cruise missiles to napalm-like 15,000-pound (6,800 kg) "Daisy Cutter" bombs, U.S. and British forces have since Oct. 7 raked Taliban military targets and hide-out tunnels and caves of al Qaeda leaders.
OVER 2,000 AIR ATTACK MISSIONS
More than 2,000 bombing missions have been flown, some accidentally killing civilians. But with the icy winter settling in, bin Laden remains at large and the fundamentalist Muslin Taliban -- who once defeated the Soviet Union -- are jeering at the U.S. military to come and get them.
Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution in Washington agreed with Pentagon officials that an air campaign alone would not win the war. But defense officials have repeatedly refused to speculate about any major use of U.S. troops.
"It will take a major infusion of ground forces in the spring to do the job," said Daalder, adding that perhaps the 82nd Airborne Division or other U.S. troops and allied forces might be used in the coming months to secure bases in northern and southern Afghanistan to launch special forces strikes.
"The Northern Alliance is a very fragile reed to pin your hopes on," said Larry Korb, a former assistant defense secretary, now with the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
"It is clear that we have over-estimated the Northern Alliance and under-estimated the Taliban," he said. "If you want to accomplish your objective of getting rid of the Taliban rather quickly, it is going to take a lot of allied troops."
Northern Alliance forces, attacking on horseback and supported by U.S. bombs and elite special troops on the ground, have so far failed to capture the capital of Kabul and the key crossroads of Mazar-i-Sharif.
NOT WHETHER, BUT WHEN
"This is opposition forces riding horseback into combat against tanks and armored personnel carriers," Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters at a briefing on Wednesday.
"So these folks are aggressive, they're taking the war to their enemy and ours," he said. "We have not put ourselves on a timetable and we shouldn't put them on a timetable."
Private experts said the key question was not whether, but when and at what cost, the Taliban would be deposed and Afghanistan shut off as a haven for bin Laden, accused by Washington of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
"One month later, we are on track and making progress on what we set out to accomplish," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's spokeswoman said at Wednesday's briefing.
Victoria Clarke refused to make any predictions on the war except to note that Rumsfeld said when the bombing started that the fight against the Taliban would be long, difficult and unconventional and would result in victory.
The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington last week estimated that the campaign in Afghanistan had cost up to $800 million in the first 25 days of the bombing and the price could soon escalate to $1 billion a month.
But Michael Vickers, a defense expert with the center, told Reuters on Wednesday that the bombing campaign to date was not intense enough. He noted that the U.S.-led air campaign against Yugoslavia two years ago saw up to 700 air sorties a day.
"The Northern Alliance are a bunch of rag-tag guys and we have not yet given them the support or material they need," Vickers said. Either we are going to get them equipped to do the job, or somebody else is going to have to do it."