Posted on 08/29/2002 8:43:35 AM PDT by robowombat
Stratfor.com August 28, 2002
Situation Deteriorating Rapidly In Afghanistan
Summary -- Recent reports indicate the Taliban and al Qaeda are regrouping in preparation for a major escalation of fighting in Afghanistan. Moreover, STRATFOR has received intelligence that resistance to U.S. forces in Afghanistan has spread well beyond these groups, threatening a steep increase in fighting over the coming months.
Analysis -- The editor of London's Al-Quds Al-Arabi magazine, Abdel-Bari Atwan, who reportedly is close to associates of Osama bin Laden, told Reuters Aug. 27 that bin Laden is firmly back in control of a regrouped and reorganized al Qaeda. He said the shock and disruption of the initial U.S. attack against the group has worn off and that al Qaeda has regained confidence, re-established ties with the Taliban and is preparing for a protracted war of attrition in Afghanistan.
This follows the airing by the Middle East Broadcasting Co. July 9 of a message -- purportedly from an al Qaeda spokesman -- warning of impending guerrilla warfare and assassinations. The statement claimed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was alive and well and that the Taliban was reorganizing and preparing for guerrilla war.
In the absence of any major attacks since Sept. 11, Afghanistan presents a prime venue for demonstrating that both organizations are operational and capable of inflicting serious damage on the United States. A renewed war there also plays to both groups' strengths and doctrines.
Afghanistan offers all the communications, logistics, support, cover and terrain familiarity these groups lack elsewhere. Both groups say the Afghan resistance in the 1980s was responsible not only for repulsing the Soviet invasion but also for contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. They will jump at the opportunity to trap another superpower in the same grinder.
Osama bin Laden has said that al Qaeda was preparing for a decade-long campaign in Somalia, akin to the Afghan precedent, when U.S. troops precipitously withdrew after a disastrous mission in 1993.
A protracted war in Afghanistan also offers al Qaeda a much higher chance of immediate and repeated success against U.S. targets than complex bombing operations abroad. It allows the group to strike again quickly without having to sort out its international financial and communications networks or trust that its sleeper agents have not been compromised.
Put Up or Shut Up
Both al Qaeda and the Taliban need to strike visibly and soon, as they are beginning to lose credibility among their followers. Repeated al Qaeda warnings of imminent attacks have been followed by little or no action.
On July 15 Atwan told Reuters that bin Laden was alive but that he would not appear again until his followers attacked the United States. He cited al Qaeda sources as saying that an attack would come soon to exploit Arab anger over U.S. actions in support of Israel and against Iraq.
In a July 9 interview with the Algerian newspaper Al Youm, al Qaeda chief spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith said al Qaeda were men of action, not words, and that the group was casing American and Jewish targets in the United States and abroad and would strike again soon. He also claimed al Qaeda would attack the "puppet government" of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Even earlier on June 2, the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat published an assertion by Abu Ghaith that an attack was coming soon, as great as that which had come before.
Easy Target
U.S. forces in Afghanistan are easier for al Qaeda and the Taliban to strike than American targets in the United States or abroad. The intelligence war is in the militants' favor in Afghanistan, given that they can blend in with the local populace.
The militants apparently have penetrated U.S. operations as well. A recently completed campaign called Operation Mountain Sweep turned up little, amid suspicions that the militants had been tipped off to U.S. and coalition plans. U.S. and British troops stationed at Bagram Air Base are under orders to destroy items identifying their families, as the base is believed to be penetrated by al Qaeda sympathizers. Hundreds of Afghans work in the camp, and an al Qaeda spokesman said July 9 that the group had succeeded in penetrating its enemies' bases.
The militants enjoy shelter inside Afghanistan as well as in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. They have internal lines of supply and ample weapons caches. In a July 24 Pentagon press briefing, Air Force Brig. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr. summed up the situation when he said, "almost anyplace we go, we find some type of weapons."
At the same time, U.S. counterterrorist efforts in the United States and abroad continue to disrupt al Qaeda's global communications, transportation and logistics networks, and the group cannot be sure their operatives remain hidden. Al Qaeda will continue to attempt attacks inside the United States, but it cannot count on success there the way it can in Afghanistan.
Worse than Reported
U.S. forces inside Afghanistan already are under constant attack, and according to multiple sources are taking more casualties than are officially admitted.
Sources in the Afghan government said guerrillas, believed to be Pushtun Taliban members, attacked U.S. troops in the Zawar region of Paktia province on the night of Aug. 4, with several U.S. troops and several attackers allegedly killed. The Pentagon report of the same incident confirmed that a patrol came under heavy fire at that time in Paktia province but said that only two attackers were killed.
Similarly, Afghan government sources reported that a rocket attack on a U.S. air base at Jalalabad airport Aug. 28 resulted in casualties among U.S. and allied Afghan troops. However, the U.S. military reported there were no casualties.
An Afghan government source also reported that more than 110 U.S. troops have gone missing in Afghanistan since October, the majority presumed dead. And a U.S. military source told STRATFOR that U.S. troops are suffering frequent casualties including fatalities that are going largely unreported in the press.
STRATFOR's military sources in countries around Afghanistan have repeated similar accounts for some time: that there is more to many of the reported incidents, and still more clashes are not being reported at all. Sources in Russian and Indian intelligence separately estimate the U.S. military has suffered between 300 and 400 killed in Afghanistan, with an unknown number wounded. The Pentagon says substantially fewer than 100 have been killed. Although foreign estimates may be inflated, there is no way to independently confirm U.S. claims either.
Sources say there are nightly attacks on U.S. troops, which is confirmed by non-governmental organizations in the country, who add that increased restrictions have been placed on the movements of off-duty U.S. forces. U.S. troops reportedly control only the towns where they have bases, and then only in daylight, while the Karzai government reportedly controls only parts of Kabul.
The militants are moving their campaigns into the cities as well. Kabul residents told Reuters the security situation has deteriorated in recent weeks. The assassination of Afghan Vice President Haji Abdul Qadir July 6 prompted the U.S. military to take over security for Karzai.
Security forces intercepted a car packed with explosives July 29 and arrested a foreign national who admitted to plotting to use the car bomb to kill Karzai and other officials. On Aug. 15 a small bomb exploded outside the Communications Ministry in Kabul, while five days later, Afghan security forces found a bomb in a bazaar shop half a kilometer from the U.S. Embassy.
Opposition Expanding
Sources in the Afghan government report two worrisome trends. First, resistance to U.S. forces and the Karzai government, previously confined to Kandahar, Khost, Paktia and Paktika provinces, has spread over the summer to nearly all majority Pushtun provinces.
These include, but are not limited to, Oruzgan, Helmand, Kunar and Nangarhar. The decision to fight the United States has reportedly been made by local leaders who have little or nothing to do with either the Taliban or al Qaeda.
Widespread hatred of U.S. forces has reportedly been exacerbated by indiscriminately belligerent behavior of U.S. troops and by incidents such as the July 1 accidental bombing of a wedding party in Oruzgan. NGOs are distancing themselves from U.S. military in anticipation of a backlash, according to the British daily The Independent.
Second, some Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara field commanders are reportedly seriously considering targeting U.S. forces. Additionally Afghan sources confirm that the Taliban has sealed a partnership with militant group Hezb-i-Islami, and the two groups' forces began operating together this month.
Soviet Experience Revisited
The result of all this is an accelerating deterioration of the U.S. experience in Afghanistan toward that of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. As in the Soviet case, it took a year for the opposition to coalesce, spreading slowly across the country's various factions. The gradual strengthening of the rebel forces was then followed by attacks on the Soviets' Afghan allies, who presented soft targets. This forced the Soviet troops to take charge of security operations themselves, destroying the illusion of partnership with a local regime. The pattern is repeating itself.
The next phase is a protracted war of attrition, with U.S. troops venturing from garrisons to face ambushes on the highways, in villages and in the mountains. This is not nay-saying pessimism. This is the situation on the ground.
U.S. and Afghan officials both admit now that U.S. troops will be in the country "for years." There are now about 16,000 U.S. and coalition troops in the Afghanistan area of operations. The Soviet deployment reached 118,000 at its peak and was still able to control no more than the towns it occupied.
One striking difference between the U.S. and Soviet experience remains. The Soviets could not attack the Mujahideen bases in Pakistan for fear of sparking a broader war with the United States. Washington does not fear retaliation from a superpower if it strikes inside Pakistan, and it will have to strike there if it is to have any better luck in Afghanistan. But expanding the campaign into Pakistan could bring down the government in Islamabad, leaving the United States at war across both countries at once. Perhaps Moscow got off easy.
While I seriously doubt it, I pray this report is true. That would be the stupidest thing these cowardly terrorists could do - regroup. Just makes for a bigger target - easier to locate, easier to wipe out.
Absolutely correct. Do the American people really have the cajones necessary to see this through when body bags start coming in from Iraq, Afganistan and every other third world crap hole that hates the US, while the entire EU and every democrat in congress whines about the "war mongering US"? I don't think they do, unfortunately.
Great...fire up the C-130 gunship and a few warthogs...
Its fall...and getting cooler...those thermal images will stick up like sore thumbs ...the tallis won't see those smart munitions coming
All conveniently unnamed, of course. And (later mentioned), some of these are supposedly fatalities.
Well, golly. IF there are fatalities, they're not from the regular army or marines, or you know for sure we'd have heard about it.
This story sounds suspiciously like the story Hackworth put out the other day -- maybe he cribbed it from Stratfor, maybe vice versa.
Either way, though, it doesn't sound accurate.
Well, we know for certain that there's a lucrative American market for this sort of "all bad news, all the time" sort of thing -- witness the continued existence of NewsMax, WND, Hackworth, Buchanan. And there are also plenty of "sources" willing to pass on rumors of disaster.
And, of course, there are plenty of folks over in Afghanistan who might benefit from spreading this sort of information around.
You completely missed my point. Your original post insinuated that we should not immediately attack Iraq (and perhaps never attack Iraq at all).
I am taking the position that that position is unacceptable.
It's all a question of risk management. If sober intelligence tells us that there's a one percent chance that Saddam would eventually acquire and deploy (through others, of course!) suitcase nukes or Ebola virus (not just the small stuff like smallpox!) to kill a million American civilians, then we should be willing to suffer 10,000 military fatalities to pre-empt it.
If there's a ten percent chance that he could and would eventually kill 100,000 American civilians by such means, then the military justification is the same.
If there's a virtually 100 percent probability that Saddam would eventually become a linchpin in some new (Al Qaeda?) scheme to kill 10,000 American civilians, then the military justification is the same.
***
I realize that I have oversimplified the scenarios. There are other issues. But I am afraid that I have also understated the probabilities. Saddam is a badder bad guy than most Americans realize. And even if you have wanted to talk about the Middle East as a meat-grinder, I frankly don't think we are facing the prospect of 10,000 American military casualties in any of these scenarios designed only to topple Saddam.
At the bottom line, then, our POTUS has to do what he has to do. He is supposed to lead the sheeple. Whether they have the will or not. Whether they have any sense or not. (This country is democratic, but it is still a republic, not a pure democracy. The Democrats want us to forget that, of course!)
From another post I made, but still pertinent here. I hope, sir/mame, that you are correct and I'm wrong.
I still don't think you understood my posts. The POTUS will do what he has to do. You seem to have the idea that the POTUS has to do what a confused electorate tells him to do. (I honestly think that such thinking, which is pervasive in our day, is the product of the past 50 years of bad civics. I even think people like Powell and Scowcroft are products of bad civics.)
As Ann Coulter would say, the grown-ups are in charge now. This doesn't mean things are going to be easy, but they will get done.
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