US unlikely to launch direct military attack

Hindustan Times ^ | 9/26/01 | AFP

[Rome2000]

US unlikely to launch direct military attack
AFP
Washington, September 26

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With its bombers and warships within striking distance of Afghanistan, the United States has begun to play down expectations of a major military campaign amid concerns about the impact on regional stability.

Instead, despite heated rhetoric after the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, the US administration appears to have settled on the short-term goal of getting suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden and fomenting internal opposition to Afghanistan's Taliban rulers.

"It is, by its very nature, something that cannot be dealt with by some sort of massive attack or invasion," US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "It is a much more subtle, nuanced, difficult, shadowy set of problems."

President George W Bush raised prospects of us strike against Afghanistan in a speech to Congress last week that vowed that if Osama bin Laden and his associates were not handed over, the Taliban would "share in their fate."

But yesterday, Bush suggested Washington would look to Taliban opponents rather than conventional military intervention to accomplish that.

Removing the Taliban by military force would leave Washington saddled with the responsibility for a country devastated by two decades of war, and could have a destabilising impact on neighbouring Pakistan.

With Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi at his side, Bush stressed the importance of maintaining the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan.

"Now, the mission is to root out terrorists, to find them and bring them to justice. Or, as I explained to the Prime Minister in western terms, to smoke them out of their caves, to get them running, so we can get them," Bush said.

"And the best way to do that and one way to do that is to ask for the cooperation of citizens within Afghanistan who may be tired of having the Taliban in place or tired of having Osama bin Laden, people from foreign soils, in their own land willing to finance this repressive government."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, however, said US aim was not "to replace one regime with another regime."

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld likened the US strategy to a billiard game with balls careening all over the table.

"You don't know what'll do it, but the end result, we could hope, would be a situation where the Al Qaeda is heaved out and the people in Taliban who... harbour terrorists... lose, and lose seriously," he said.

Inside the country, the situation was a "very mixed picture" with divisions within the Taliban and disaffection among the Afghan population, many of them hungry or fleeing for the border to escape its harsh rule.

Rumsfeld has suggested that the Northern Alliance, a loose coalition of minority ethnic groups fighting the Taliban, could be "a lot of help" to the US but neither he nor other administration officials have said whether they will support them with arms or other supplies.

[AGAviator]

If you had "deep cover" agents in Afghanistan right now, would you admit it, or would you deny it?

I find it hard to believe that we utterly abandoned Afghanistan as a focal point 12 years ago, especially since bin Laden has been our public enemy #1 for so long now, and he hangs out there

Here are a few reasons.

(1) Geopolitically, US foreign policy has always considered Afghanistan a backwater, in the Soviet/Russian sphere of influence. The US has always restrained from having too much presence in a region Russia considers its back yard.

(2) Pakistan is far more important geopolitically than Afghanistan, and we have slapped Pakistan with economic sanctions and generally looked down our nose at them more often than not. About the only time we really allied ourselves with Pakistan were when we needed a conduit to support the Afghan resistance, which was done through Pakistan's ISI and not directly by the US government.

(3) Afghanistan is an extremely poor and backwards country which has never rebuilt from the destruction of the Soviets. The first thing almost any Westerners experience is dysentery from contaminated food and water. Then there's the lack of creature comforts, female companionship, and time spent learning languages and customs of a region the US has never thought important. If you were a US agent, would you think Afghanistan is a career path? Why not Rwanda or Zimbabwe?

(4) As far as OBL, do you really think Clinton or any of his foreign policy team were giving serious thought to a long-term strategy to nab Bin Ladin? No, Clinton's response was exactly what you saw. Lob a few cruise missiles, then on to the sexual dalliance.