Bush strategy of multifront war weakens rebels in Afghanistan
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published October 14, 2004
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President Bush's three-year-old strategy of fighting a multifront war on terror is stretching enemy forces thin and reducing their ability to mount attacks in Afghanistan, said U.S. officials and independent authorities.
Much of the debate in the United States has centered on U.S. forces being stressed in the global war. But military analysts are pointing to Afghanistan's near-violence-free elections on Saturday as an example of enemy forces being depleted to the point where they cannot sustain attacks.
The analysts also say some of the thousands of terrorists trained in Osama bin Laden's Afghan camps have gone to fight in other areas, such as Iraq, further stretching their capabilities.
"The terrorists are being used up, and they're losing hundreds a day in many cases," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, a military analyst. "The administration has a low profile on that. But [the terrorists] are suffering severe casualties. That's why there was success in Afghanistan, Samara, and now you have negotiations in Fallujah and Ramadi." The Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi are run, in part, by militants.
"The fact is the summer offensive we conducted that has been going on for the last six months has had a significant impact on terrorists trying to organize attacks that could have come about during the election," Gen. McInerney said. "There's just no question about it."
Robert Andrews, a former Green Beret and CIA analyst who advises the Pentagon on war issues, said he suspects "the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan are getting thinned out."
In the months before the Afghan election, the U.S.-led coalition teamed with Pakistani troops to pinch and kill militants in hide-outs along the borders. The joint offensive killed hundreds of fighters from the terror network al Qaeda and the hard-line Taliban that ruled Afghanistan until the Oct. 7, 2001, invasion.
Mr. Andrews attributed the drop in attacks to reduced capability as well as political sensitivity.
"Don't underestimate the power of national elections -- the appeal to Afghanis is to run their own government."
A U.S. special operations official agreed. "There is popular support for a stable Afghanistan, and the bad guys would do their cause no good by going against the population," said this source, who has fought the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Bush strategy of pre-emption has meant that U.S. forces, covert and overt, have engaged terrorists on several fronts, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, the Philippines and Asia.
Army Lt. Gen. David Barno, chief of the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, said before the election that intelligence reports pointed to the Taliban-al Qaeda alliance trying to carry out a string of attacks on and around election day.
Only a handful materialized, and U.S. forces intercepted some attackers. Some analysts said the Taliban might have lacked the resources after a bloody summer.
Also, Gen. Barno had dispatched a security force of 100,000 troops and police throughout the country.
L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, said captured foreign fighters had told the U.S.-led coalition there that many of them had been trained in bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan. They presumably would have been fighting in Afghanistan today if they did not have to move to Iraq, officials said.
Gen. Barno changed strategy earlier this year, breaking up troops into units that would embed with villagers and collect intelligence.
"What we're doing is moving to a more classic counterinsurgency strategy here in Afghanistan," Gen. Barno said. "That's a fairly significant change in terms of our tactical approach out there on the ground."
The election "was a big defeat for the Taliban and a huge defeat for al Qaeda," Gen. Barno said on Tuesday.
A second source close to the U.S. operations community said, "We are diminishing their numbers on the ground."
The problem, as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said, is that it is difficult to develop "metrics" that tell whether the enemy is replacing troops as fast as the United States kills them.
The source said, "Terrorists don't have the affirmative duty to kill us. They can sit and bide their time if they have to. We don't have that luxury. We're trying to force them into battles where we can kill them.
"Clearly, we have them reacting to us. No doubt about that. That is part of our goal. It's a victory when they don't hit us when they said they would. But it's not the end of the game. The problem is they could attack us in four months and create just as much havoc." |
