An attack upon Afghanistan from either direction , from
up thru Pakistan , or down from Tajikistan where the
Russians still have stationed 15,000 troops is
more than daunting ...
some info and background here on Tajikistan
atimes.com
here's a map to refer to , from teresa's post before(prolly better map would do)
azzam.com
You can bomb Kabul for immediate retribution on the
Taliban , but there's hardly anything
there worth bombing , it's bin Laden we want.
Will airstrikes be enough to force the Taliban's hand ?
It will be known soon enough how prepared our
intelligence really is .
As for a joint effort and staging some offensive from
Tajikistan to the north U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage is scheduled to hold talks on joint anti-terrorist efforts in the Russian capital next week.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Friday tried to squelch speculation that a U.S.-led anti-terrorist operation could be launched against Afghanistan from formerly Soviet Central Asia ....and he announced that the chiefs of the army general staffs of the 12 countries of the CIS - a loose grouping of formerly Soviet states - would meet in Moscow on Sept. 26 to discuss coordination of military steps against terrorism.
Gen. Anatoly Kvashnin, the head of the Russian General Staff, said it was unlikely that the Russian armed forces would take part in ``acts of revenge'' for this week's deadly attacks against the World Trade Center and Pentagon .
``The United States has powerful enough military forces that it can cope with this task on its own,''Kvashnin was quoted as saying.
He added that there had been no talks on the military level between the United States and Russia about Moscow's participation in any operation.
Russia has about 25,000 troops stationed in Tajikistan, which borders on Afghanistan and is one of the few countries from which an offensive could be launched. Impoverished Tajikistan is still trying to recover from a five-year civil war between mostly Islamic opposition forces and the hard-line secular government, and it is frequently wracked by violence.
Nikolai Kovalyov, the former head of Russia's Federal Security Service, the KGB's main successor, warned Friday that a U.S. attack on Afghanistan would fail to reach bin Laden and would backfire on the United States.
``In Afghanistan's mountainous terrain, it takes a trainload of explosives to destroy three militants,''
he said at a news conference.
``The chance of hitting bin Laden is zero.''
The task set before our planners , without cooperation
from the Pakistani Intelligence all the way ...and later
from the Russians (possibly later
the Chinese?) , puts before us a monumental under
taking , and a resolve of steel.
And this is just in dealing with the terrorist camps
in geopolitical & geographical blackholes of Afghanistan
and the Russo/ Pan Asian area...
great post BTW , Solon. |
