<<No problem, we'll come get him, watch us.>>
If Bush wants an invasion, it could become more
costly than Vietnam
Afghanistan
By Robert Fisk
18 September 2001
President Bush is talking about a "crusade'' ? it would be
difficult to find a word more likely to enrage Muslims ? but
if he plans to wage it in Afghanistan, the United States
faces a military campaign more fraught and potentially even
more costly than Vietnam.
Ground troops may be necessary to seize Osama bin Laden but
they will be entering a country containing one tenth of the
world's land mines, left by Soviet occupation forces across
80 per cent of the land.
Besides, anyone who wants to invade Afghanistan needs
friends. The Russians had the communist government of Babrak
Karmal. But, with the murder of the only serious opponent of
the Taliban, Shah Masood, by Arab suicide bombers nine days
ago, the United States hasn't a single friend in that
cemetery of foreign armies.
So, are the Americans planning a mere attack by cruise
missiles? They fired 70 missiles at Osama bin Laden's camps
after the bombing of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es
Salaam ? they knew where they were, of course, because the
camps were built by the CIA during the Afghan-Russian war ?
but they did not touch Mr bin Laden. Do they plan to use
special parachute units to descend on the areas around
Kandahar where Mr bin Laden has been known to live in the
past?
And what about those mines? If the Americans are even
contemplating a ground force, it can enter only from
Pakistan ? the most dangerous main supply route it would be
possible to find ? and up the Kabul Gorge from Jalalabad.
But the Russians seeded the perimeters of Jalalabad,
Kandahar, Khost and Herat with anti-armour mines. There are,
in Afghanistan today, more than 10 million mines. They lie
in fields, on mountainsides, beside roads, around the big
cities, along irrigation ditches. On average, between 20 and
25 Afghan men, women and children are blown up by mines
every day ? even if we take the lower figure, this indicates
73,000 civilian casualties from these mines in the past 10
years alone.
A military incursion would, therefore, need an army of mine
clearance specialists as well as soldiers, men who would
have to inch their way over the roughest terrain in the
world ? while under attack ? to make the roads and
countryside safe for the Americans and their allies. Of
Afghanistan's 29 provinces, 27 are littered with mines.
During their savage 10-year occupation, the Russians also
planted thousands of mines in "security zones'' around
Afghanistan's airports, power stations and government
installations. Western non-governmental organisations
working in the country two years ago estimated that it would
cost £80 per mine to clear Afghanistan's 10 million mines ?
and 45 days to clear merely a square mile of land. There are
now two million disabled men, women and children in
Afghanistan. No infantry can march across this territory.
And then there is that main supply route. Pakistan has
already made clear that it will not involve its own military
in a campaign, although there are suspicions that enough
money might persuade General Musharraf ? now respectfully
referred to as President by the Americans even though he
took the presidency illegally ? to change his mind. However,
the "Jihadi" culture has already impregnated the Pakistan
army and there is a real possibility of unrest turning to
civil war if the Americans arrived to invade Muslim
Afghanistan.
The very border areas through which a Western army would
have to pass are held by men loyal to the Taliban. On the
Pakistani side of the frontier, there are now 2,000 Taliban
madrassas (schools) where religious teaching is given not
only to potential mujahedin but to Chechen and Tadjik
fighters as well.
The policemen who guard these madrassas constitute a mere
facade of governmental control.
Even if the Americans penetrated Afghanistan, their shells
would only plough over the ruins. The Russians tried to
destroy the Taliban's predecessors with 10 years of bombing,
destroying whole villages, with their people, farm animals,
fields, trees and mud huts. And still they could not get rid
of the mujahedin, still they could not ? to use Mr Bush's
inappropriately folksy phrase ? "smoke them out of their
holes''.
With Pakistan as its only, broken ally among Afghan-istan's
neighbours, with no friends inside the country and 10
million hidden land mines lying across its mountains and
fields and cities, Mr Bush's "crusade'' looks more than
dangerous. We are now being told that the United States is
no longer afraid to take casualties. America, the President
says, will have to accept losses. He'd better be right. |
