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COVER STORY: STRATEGY
Brass Tacks
A former army officer analyses the strategies of
the US and the Northern Alliance in the war against the Taliban
By Maj Gen (retd) Ashok K. Mehta
 Fighting
the first war of the 21st century is not going to be easy. Unable to erase
the ignominy their soldiers had to face in Somalia, the US would be wary
of pitting them against terrain, tactics and tribes they are totally unfamiliar
with. The Americans will, therefore, try to take a leaf from Mao Tse-Tung's
book: win this war without fighting themselves.
Six days into the war against Osama bin Laden,
no one is quite sure how long it will last. There is a silver bullet though:
the Northern Alliance (NA). Only that the NA has huge problems of cohesion
in operability and joint command. Given the necessary push, the alliance
can fight the dirty war against the Taliban if it does not, as expected,
"collapse from within". Right now, the Taliban appears fighting
fit despite the incessant pounding by the US and its allies. President
George W. Bush boasts he is not "gonna fire a $2 million missile
at a $10 tent to hit a camel in the butt". But after firing nearly
150 such missiles, the US has not been able to break the Taliban resilience.
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BATTLE READY: US soldiers load ammunition on aircraft aboard the
USS Enterprise
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One thing is certain. Operation Enduring Freedom
will be no repeat of Kosovo. It rests on a triad of principles, objectives
and phases. The war strategy is driven by three factors: the limited season
for battle in view of the impending winter, minimal collateral damage
and US sensitivity to body bags. Here is the anatomy of Operation Enduring
Freedom.
Political and Military Aims
Remove the Taliban from the seat of power and
replace it with a broad-based power structure representing the different
ethnic groupings.
Capture bin Laden.
Destroy the Al Qaida network and other terrorist
organisations.
Establish a verification/monitoring mechanism
to root out narco terrorism from Afghanistan.
Conduct of Operations in Three Phases
PHASE I
Preliminary bombing campaigns, the short ones
lasting five to seven days and longer ones lasting two to three weeks.
(see graphic next page)
Destabilise and unnerve the Taliban and induce
defections.
Sanitise select areas for conduct of future
ground operations.
PHASE II
Special operations to pluck out bin Laden and
his associates.
Secure the Herat-Kabul-Jalalabad road and recapture
the areas north of it, including the towns of Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif and
Bagram.
PHASE III
Capture of Kabul by the NA, if required with
the help of the US special forces
Capture of Kandahar by coalition forces.
The five-party NA is advancing towards Herat,
Mazar-e-Sharif and Kabul. It has cut off the Kabul-Herat road and is on
the verge of securing control of Bagram airport. Once this is accomplished,
the US and allied aircraft will use this as a forward staging base. The
northern thrust is being supported by Russia, Iran and India. The air
bases in Uzbekistan will be used by the special helicopter-borne forces
to occupy Kabul. Airborne divisions will then be dropped to sanitise the
key cities of Kabul and Kandahar. The US-led coalition forces can then
replace the Taliban with a broad-based national government.
The Taliban might ultimately wilt under pressure
and bin Laden may well be captured. All this might bring the war to an
early end. But a US victory is no guarantee that terrorism will end in
Afghanistan.
(The author belonged to the Fifth Gorkha Rifles and has served in
Afghanistan and in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.)
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