Published on Sunday, December 9, 2001 in the Toronto Sun
America's New War: A Progress Report
by Eric Margolis
What has the U.S. achieved after waging war for the past two months in
Afghanistan?
Afghanistan's de facto government, the Taliban, an Islamic religious
movement with about 30,000 armed supporters, has been overthrown and
scattered. After holding out for five weeks under massive U.S.
bombardments, its leader, Mullah Omar, ordered his men to retreat to the
mountains. Omar, who may be shortly captured or killed, claimed he ordered
the retreat to spare civilians in Taliban-ruled areas from U.S. bombing.
To date, the U.S. has dropped 10,000 bombs on Afghanistan, killing sizable
numbers of civilians - in the range of 1,500-2,000, according to Afghan
sources. U.S. bombing of cities, towns and villages has driven over 160,000
people into refugee camps.
* On Dec. 3, 2000 - one year ago - this column said that overthrowing the
Taliban would "pave the way for a second Russian occupation of
Afghanistan." This has now happened. The Northern Alliance, armed and
funded by Russia, directed by the Afghan Communist party and under the
overall command of the chief of the Russian general staff, Marshall Viktor
Kvashnin, deputy KGB director Viktor Komogorov, and a cadre of Russian
advisers, seized Kabul and all of northern Afghanistan. U.S. President
George Bush committed a colossal, inexcusable blunder. If this column could
foresee Russian intervention, why didn't the White House?
* Last week's much-ballyhooed Afghan "unity" conference in Germany produced
precisely what this column predicted: a sham "coalition" government run by
the Northern Alliance. One of the CIA's Pashtun "assets," Hamid Karzai, who
represents no one but himself, was named prime minister. There was no other
real Pashtun representation, though they comprise half the population.
Of 30 cabinet seats, two-thirds went to Northern Alliance Tajiks, notably
the power ministries of defence, the interior and foreign affairs. Two
women were added for window dressing to please the West. The 87-year old
deposed Afghan king, Zahir Shah, widely blamed for allowing the communists
to infiltrate Afghanistan in the 1970s, was invited back as a figurehead
monarch. In short, a communist-dominated regime, ruled by a king, whose
strings are pulled by Moscow. Quite a bizarre creation.
FEUDING STARTS
The very next day, feuding broke out among Alliance members. Old communist
stalwart Rashid Dostam, who had just finished massacring hundreds of
Taliban prisoners with American and British help, threatened war if his
Uzbeks did not get more spoils. My old friend, the Alliance's figurehead
president, Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani, a respected Islamic scholar, was
shoved aside by young communists.
* The Bush administration was apparently too preoccupied chasing Osama bin
Laden to notice its new best friend, Russia, had broken its agreement to
wait for formation of a pro-U.S., pro-Pakistani regime, and seized half of
Afghanistan. Marshall Kvashnin rushed his men into Kabul, just as he
outfoxed the Americans in 1999 in a similar coup de main in Kosovo.
* The hunt for bin Laden and his Al-Qaida continues. A few senior figures
have been killed, likely including Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egypt's
Islamic Jihad. The net is closing around bin Laden's possible hiding
places. Unless he has escaped Afghanistan, his capture or death appear
imminent. This will be welcome news for the Bush administration. If bin
Laden somehow escapes, or his body is never found, Bush will be accused of
blowing apart Afghanistan, killing large numbers of civilians, and allowing
the Russians to grab back the country, all for nothing.
* The late Pashtun leader Abdul Haq, whom I knew from my Peshawar days,
warned the U.S. before his death that bombing Afghanistan was unnecessary
and a grave mistake. Taliban control could be broken, where needed, by
financing tribal uprisings - the standard form of Afghan warfare - without
foreign intervention. Otherwise, he warned, the Northern Alliance would
take over and bring in the Russians. He pleaded with Washington for
restraint, but to no avail. Haq was captured by the Taliban during a
bungled CIA operation and hanged.
But Haq was right. U.S. forces could have hunted bin Laden in southern
Afghanistan with relative impunity, as they are now doing, without having
to launch a total war against the Taliban. U.S. air power totally dominates
barren Afghanistan. Taliban forces could not move or communicate. There
were only a small number of Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan where
bin Laden was hiding.
Bombing Afghan civilian centres was absolutely unnecessary. The only real
military targets offered by the Taliban were its entrenched troops facing
the Alliance. It was remarkable the Taliban managed to withstand five weeks
of carpet bombing by U.S. B-52s - particularly, as one Pakistani writer
wryly noted, after his nation gave in to the U.S. after only a threatening
phone call from Washington.
The U.S. could have hunted bin Laden without allowing the Russians to
recapture half of Afghanistan, a severe geopolitical defeat for American
ambitions to use that nation as a gateway to Central Asian oil and gas. And
without blasting to rubble what little remained of demolished Afghanistan,
and without driving 160,000 civilians into terrified flight.
So, after eight weeks of war, the Taliban is out, the communists are in
power in Kabul and the south is in chaos. The war has cost Washington US$60
billion to date. Afghanistan is a bloody mess. And Vladimir Putin is
smiling.
Copyright © 2001, Canoe Limited Partnership
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