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WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! Thoughts on the State of the War in Afghanistan By William S. Lind February 8, 2002 Receive FREE updates by email: Back to Main Page ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- The initial campaign in America's first Afghan War appears to be over. We find ourselves now in a temporary pause, where such American military activity as continues is largely an exercise in public relations. We may or may not eventually kill or capture Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden; it matters little either way. It is an appropriate time to stop and reflect on what has passed thus far and what still awaits us. As always, an important caution is that the information currently at our disposal is of uncertain quality. Much is still claims, and claims almost always prove exaggerated, often absurdly so. There is much we simply don't know; it was several years after the end of the Gulf War before we found out that the Iraqi Republican Guard had escaped largely intact. Any conclusions we reach at this point must be considered tentative. Yet it is still worthwhile to reflect. The official line in Washington is that the world's only superpower has won yet another glorious victory, more stellar, if that were possible, than even its triumphs in Grenada and Panama (Saddam's survival has knocked a bit of the tinsel off the Gulf War, Lebanon is best forgotten, and we seem to be moving to get our revenge for the unfortunate affair in Somalia). As Olivares said of Nordlingen, it is the greatest victory of the age. More, we have successfully reduced war to little more than airstrikes, called in by a few intrepid Green Berets on the ground. The only risks are taken by whatever local allies we can rent for the occasion. As General Nivelle put it, "we have the formula," and we can apply it anywhere. Iraq appears to be the next likely laboratory. Unfortunately, there is less to all this than meets the eye. While Washington attributes the Taliban's (possibly temporary) collapse to American actions, particularly air attacks, there were others factors in play. As a Pashtun-based movement, it was never strong in non-Pashtun parts of Afghanistan; before the first bomb fell, Mullah Omar said that the Taliban would lose Kabul and the government. The Northern Alliance's new Russian-supplied tanks and other heavy weapons may have had Russian crews as well. Money - perhaps the most powerful weapon in this sort of war - undoubtedly played a role in the side-switching. The surprise of the campaign was the rapid collapse of the Taliban in its own Pashtun region. Here, however, the decisive factor was not what we did right but what they had done wrong. The Taliban had broken the first rule of all politics: it had alienated its own base (the Arabs of Al Quaeda did the same by alienating most of the Afghans). By ignoring tribal rulers and tribal customs, playing the bully and simply not meeting average Afghans' basic needs, the Taliban had cut the ground out from under itself. It only took a small push to make it fall. That small push American airpower and American Special Forces, operating in the role for which they have trained, assisting local allies, were able to supply. But it only worked because the Taliban itself had already created the conditions for it to work. That is not likely to be true elsewhere, and it may not remain true in Afghanistan. As chaos spreads there (and it is spreading), the Taliban may start looking pretty good in retrospect. And now we come to an interesting if carefully overlooked fact: The Taliban is almost all still there. When the Taliban had a state, we were able to fight it. But its essence was never being a state, much less having facilities "we could blow up with missiles." The Taliban was a movement, a non-state actor made up of people with a shared world-view, a world-view for which they were willing to fight. Those people have not been killed, nor taken prisoner (with a very few exceptions), nor driven out. They are in Afghanistan, waiting. Today, they say they are not Taliban. Tomorrow, they can be Taliban again, or something similar with a new mullah and a new name. And, now that the Taliban is not a state, we cannot fight it. The Taliban or its successor and our Second Generation armed forces are ships passing in the night. What of Al Quaeda? It seems to be the big loser thus far. While its casualties have probably been small, it has lost its base in Afghanistan, possibly for good (again, a base it had alienated). But is that how Al Quaeda sees the strategic picture? Possibly not. From its perspective, it may have effectively applied the old lesson from fighting the Crusaders. When the Western knights put on their impenetrable plate armor, mount their massive, powerful horses and charge, you scatter. At the end of the day, they hold the battlefield, but nothing more. You survive, and when they return to their camp, dismount, and take off their armor, you sneak up and shoot in some arrows. They win most of the battles, but in the end, you win the war. More, the leadership of Al Quaeda may understand the most important point that Washington does not: the centers of gravity of this Afghan War are not and never have been in Afghanistan itself. The centers of gravity are, first, Pakistan, and second, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. If the Taliban is utterly destroyed, Al Quaeda driven out, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden killed, etc., but we have the Islamic Emirate of Pakistan (with nukes) or Saudi Arabia (with the oil for America's SUVs) or Egypt (keystone of the Mediterranean), America will have suffered a strategic defeat and militant Islam won a great victory. Here we see the consequence of Washington thinking of this conflict as a "war against terrorism" instead of the vastly larger phenomenon we call Fourth Generation Warfare. The essence of Fourth Generation war is a universal crisis of legitimacy of the state. The central strategic question is therefore whether events and America's actions thus far have strengthened or weakened the legitimacy of the pro-American regimes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. While the answer is yet unclear, it may well be that those regimes' legitimacy, already shaky, has been further weakened. Indeed, by forcing them to publicly line up with America against "terrorism" and bin Laden - and thus also against large segments of their own populations - we may have pushed them closer to a fall. If just one of them does fall - not to mention two or three going - bin Laden will have good reason to think himself the victor, even if he is doing so in Hell. Of the three centers of gravity, the most critical is Pakistan, because it has nuclear weapons and the most competent conventional forces in the Islamic world (our aircraft carriers will be out of the region very quickly if Pakistani subs start hunting them). It may also be the country where the regime's legitimacy is most fragile. It is difficult to think that the course of the Afghan war thus far has made its legitimacy stronger. The pro-American Pakistani government has: Seen the fall of the Afghan Taliban government it created, indeed been compelled to assist in its replacement Watched American bombs kill Pakistanis who went to fight for the Taliban, while American aircraft operated from Pakistani bases Been helpless as the new government in Kabul openly allied with India; Been forced to turn against the forces of Islam within Pakistan, arresting mullahs, closing schools and agreeing that the guerillas it has long supported in Kashmir are now "terrorists." Events are now moving toward the next and possibly final act in the fall of the regime in Pakistan. If war does break out between India and Pakistan - and having spent this much money on mobilization, India is more likely to fight than not - Pakistan is likely to be defeated. Its only alternative appears to be public humiliation by agreeing to India's terms and ending its support for the Islamic guerillas in Kashmir. Either event makes it probable that General Musharraf's head will be the ball in an informal if enthusiastic game of soccer, and Pakistan will find itself with a Taliban-like government. America's position in Afghanistan, as well as in-the entire region, will be untenable, and our "glorious victory" through airpower will have turned to ashes in our mouth. What of our situation in Afghanistan if the current Pakistani government somehow does manage to hang on? Even then, the American tide has probably reached its culminating point and will begin to recede. In the current drole de guerre, the remnants of the Taliban and warlords not bought off or brought into the current Kabul regime are catching their breath. They are digesting the lessons of the recent campaign and developing new techniques for confronting the latest foreign invader. Sooner or later, they will go on the offensive, and Americans will start to die. The spreading chaos will make Taliban rule seem like the "good old days." The Quisling government in Kabul - a classic government of exiles, who like the Bourbons will have forgotten nothing and learned nothing - may buy some time by spreading foreign money around, but the population is not likely to see much of it. Its authority is not likely to run beyond the boundaries of Kabul in any case. Month by month, the American and other foreign troops will find the population growing more hostile, "incidents" increasing, and airpower more and more irrelevant. In the end, we will be driven out, as every invader of Afghanistan is driven out, only too thankful to be gone. What is to be done? First, we should get out of Afghanistan now, while the getting is good. Contrary to the beliefs of the Wilsonians, who think that if we can just teach them to make cookoo clocks and cheese with holes in it, the Afghans will become Swiss, the best state we can hope for in Afghanistan is a permanent, low-level civil war. That applies the Afghans' fighting spirits where they are applied best, to each other. Unfortunately, the momentum in Washington is now toward another exercise in "nation building," which means we are likely to stay, and pay for it. Second, focus all our energies on preventing another war between India and Pakistan. Washington is beginning to wake up to this, but it remains mesmerized by day-to-day events in Afghanistan, and India and Pakistan get a second-best effort. While General Musharraf may not survive even without a defeat by India, he is virtually certain to go down if Pakistan is beaten. If he goes, so do we. Third, get out of Saudi Arabia. Whatever military advantages we gain by being there are far outweighed by the fact that our presence continually undermines the legitimacy of the current pro-American al Saud government. Some recent press reports suggest the Saudis themselves may ask us to leave; we should pray those reports are correct. Finally, we must understand once and for all that the problem we are facing is not merely "terrorism." It is Fourth Generation Warfare, and it is the biggest change in war since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The entire American national security establishment needs to bend its efforts to understanding what a Fourth Generation world is likely to be like. Regrettably, since this task requires ideas, not more "programs" with vast budgets, it is presently not receiving any attention in Washington. In today's Pentagon, the program is the product. The Soviet Union's defeat in Afghanistan eventually led to the fall of the Soviet regime itself. Of course, we know the same thing could never happen here. William S. Lind is the director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation. This commentary was written on January 22, 2002. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. Section 107, any copyrighted work in this message is distributed under fair use without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for nonprofit research and educational purposes only.[Ref. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ] Want to be on our lists? Write at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a menu of our lists! Write to same address to be off lists! <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. 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