Thomas,
Well, maybe the Republican Congress in 1998. -g-
Are you anti Republican as well as anti war? -g-
Read this one...it is fascinating.
Concern that the USA may sell Russian "secret forces" down the swannee. Quite honestly, my opinion is that the Russians have nothing to worry about. The West is not going to give up on whacking the Taliban.
The Russians want the USA to beef the campaign up by the look of things.
themoscowtimes.com
Sowing Seeds of Acrimony?
In a pattern almost the same as in other armed conflicts of the last decade, the United States and Britain attacked Afghanistan with warplanes, strategic bombers and cruise missiles. But the number of sorties was not impressive -- 40 on the first day, 20 on the second, as well as several dozen cruise missiles -- in comparison with the thousands of daily sorties carried out during the Gulf War in 1991 or hundreds of NATO daily sorties against Yugoslavia in 1999.
However, the Pentagon claims that the strikes virtually destroyed the Taliban's radar capability, air force and air defense system and that the West has gained air superiority. A great military achievement, but only if one forgets that the Taliban did not have any air defense system to begin with. There were only a couple of civilian air-traffic control radars that were donated to Afghanistan by international organizations to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid by airlift.
The airports have been repeatedly hit, the radars have been destroyed and no food, medicine or clothing can be airlifted directly into Afghanistan. In the approaching winter, many roads will be closed and a large number of Afghans may perish (international charities say it may be in the hundreds of thousands).
After destroying the Taliban's air defense system, U.S. warplanes still do not venture to fly low-altitude missions to engage the bulk of the Taliban's armed forces. The Taliban, with their air defense system "destroyed," still has several hundred operational Soviet-made ZU-23 twin anti-aircraft 23mm guns, mounted on trucks.
These mobile guns were mostly used in ground battles during the past 10 years of civil war in Afghanistan, but are now being turned against allied aircraft. In the Gulf in 1991, most allied warplanes were shot down by ZU-23 and ZSU-23 self-propelled Shilka 23mm guns, and this time the same may happen to the embarrassment of the U.S. government. The Taliban also apparently still has some Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, supplied by the United States to resistance fighters during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Stingers are also a serious danger to low-flying aircraft.
The low intensity allied air offensive in Afghanistan has in the first two days destroyed most of the small Taliban air force. But since airpower was not used much in the Afghan civil war, genuine damage to the Taliban war machine seems to be negligible.
While the allied air force does not venture to fly low-altitude missions against the Taliban, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance will not benefit much from the air campaign. And even if the allied attack planes do begin to fly close air-support missions, the effect will be limited, since there are only a few dozen attack planes on the two aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea to cover the whole of Afghanistan. In order to make a dent in the Taliban militarily, the West still needs operational airfields near to or inside of Afghanistan for its tactical air force.
Last week, Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the State Duma defense committee, told reporters that "there are growing misgivings in Moscow's political and military circles over American actions in Afghanistan." Russia is in fact already directly involved in the war inside Afghanistan, said Arbatov, since it is supplying the Northern Alliance with tanks and other heavy equipment together with Russian crews and technicians. But the United States does not, in turn, help the Northern Alliance, and when its long-postponed strike comes, it may be fainthearted. "Russia may find itself facing a new enemy -- the Taliban -- alone," concluded Arbatov. To add to Russian dissatisfaction, Washington is not volunteering to pay for the tanks and guns Russia has supplied to the anti-Taliban forces.
Reliable sources in Moscow say that parts of the Russian 201st division have also crossed from Tajikistan into Afghanistan to help fight the Taliban. Russian officers and tank crews are operating with the anti-Taliban forces only 30 kilometers north of Kabul. But now the United States says it may stop the bombing campaign altogether "to assess damage."
The Taliban may then counterattack the rag-tag Northern Alliance and defeat it, together with its Russian support. The covert Russian invasion of Afghanistan would be exposed, the Russian public would be furious, the elite would blame the treacherous Americans, and the new closeness between Moscow and the West might end in acute acrimony.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst. |
