Military Campaign Outstripping American Diplomatic Maneuvers
nytimes.com
By MICHAEL R. GORDON
October 15, 2001
WASHINGTON, Oct. 14 — One week after the bombs started falling on Afghanistan, the United States military campaign has run ahead of Washington's political strategy to install a new regime in Kabul.
American forces have attacked Al Qaeda's terrorist camps, knocked out the Taliban's surface-to-air missiles, blasted its air force and pummeled its command post and, according to one intelligence report, come tantalizingly close to killing its supreme leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, missing by a matter of minutes.
But while United States has pursued Osama bin Laden and sought to neutralize the Taliban that shelters him, the behind-the-scenes effort to organize a regime that would replace Taliban leaders has made no discernible progress.
The Central Intelligence Agency has made little progress in organizing resistance to the Taliban among the Pashtun tribes in the south, United States officials disclosed. Nor is the C.I.A. working with all of the factions that make up Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban groups in the north that is dominated by Uzbeks and Tajiks, officials said.
The ethnically diverse groups that oppose the Taliban regime have also made scant progress in forging a broad coalition that could rule Afghanistan should Washington find Osama bin Laden and drive the regime that supported him from power. The result is that Washington is still struggling to assemble a durable coalition that could take over if the Taliban fragments or is toppled.
Concerned about the looming power vacuum, the National Security Council completed a review on Friday that calls for accelerating the overthrow of the Taliban regime and supporting a successor regime that could bring stability to Afghanistan.
The faltering efforts to form a new Afghan coalition that could follow the Taliban is also leading Washington to recalibrate its bombing strategy. To that end, the United States has focused many of its strikes on the Taliban's forces near the northern towns of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and recently, according to the Northern Alliance, on Taliban front-line units near the town of Taloqan.
The aim is to enable the Northern Alliance to attack west toward Mazar-i-Sharif while discouraging the group from moving south on Kabul, the Afghan capital.
The Northern Alliance is dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks and is unacceptable to many Pashtuns, the main ethnic group in the country. Washington is concerned that Afghans could rally around the Taliban if the Northern Alliance rushed into the capital and that such a move could also upset Pakistan, which has long been at odds with the anti-Taliban group.
In contrast, there have been few, if any, attacks on the Taliban forces that are facing off the Northern Alliance just north of Kabul. So far, the trenches along that front has appeared to be such a sanctuary that Taliban soldiers have been jumping in their trucks each night to leave Kabul for the safety of the front line.
Seeking to encourage the Americans to step up their strikes on Taliban ground troops, a senior envoy for the Northern Alliance indicated that the group would cooperate with Washington by directing its attacks away from the capital for now.
"There is no intention of attacking Kabul," Haron Amin, the Northern Alliance's chief representative to Washington, said in an interview. "I think that we have objectives to secure first before any action around Kabul."
But like other American, and Afghan leaders, Mr. Amin expressed concern that the military and political dimensions of the American operation in Afghanistan were out of sync.
"The military track is way ahead of the political track," Mr. Amin said. "There is a military road map, but the American political road map has not been clear. U.S. agencies have been divided about what they think should happen in Afghanistan."
From the start, the American goal has not been merely to hunt down Mr. bin Laden and destroy his Al Qaeda terrorist network. It has also been to ensure that Afghanistan did not remerge as a haven for a new set of terrorists that would threaten the United States and destabilize the region.
Initially, there was considerable debate within the Bush Administration about how to accomplish this goal. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has made no secret of his desire to oust the Taliban.
But the State Department has sometimes talked as if the United States might be able to work with "moderate" elements of the Taliban if Mr. bin's Laden's terrorist network was destroyed and that Washington did not have a large stake in the outcome of a power struggle in Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance has also received conflicting messages from Defense and State Department officials, with some Defense officials urging a free hand and the State department urging caution.
In its new policy review, the National Security Council review last week concluded that Washington should accelerate its efforts to overthrow the Taliban regime and replace it with a coalition that could bring stability to Afghanistan. That review reflected an implicit recognition that the military and political aims of the American campaign needed to be better coordinated.
While the nature of a post-Taliban regime does not seem to be an immediate issue it is central for three reasons.
First, there is a risk that the Taliban could collapse more quickly than supposed, throwing the nation into chaos. While there is no sign that the Taliban is about to crack, there have been some defections, and the American military has tried to target its leader, Mullah Omar. They have struck his compound and command posts. Taliban officials say that the Mullah's relatives have been killed. An a intelligence report says that the Taliban leader escaped one strike by about five minutes, according to an American official.
A second reason is that United States officials are calculating that some groups within the country will not turn against the Taliban unless they understand what regime is to follow and are promised a role in that regime.
Thirdly, Pakistan and other nations in the area are looking for assurances that Afghanistan will not turn into a chaotic failed state, nor does the United States want the nation to turn into a new haven for terrorists after the Taliban are gone.
Seeking to avoid the impression that it is calling all the shots, the Bush administration has said publicly that the future governing arrangements in Afghanistan are up to the Afghans. But now that the National Security Council review has been completed and the Administration has settled on the goal of speeding up the removal of the Taliban U.S. officials plan to step up the behind-the- scenes efforts to establish a new coalition government.
Administration officials hope the C.I.A. will be more successful in fomenting resistance to the Taliban in the south. The C.I.A., some officials say, has also plenty of work to do with anti-Taliban groups in the North.
The agency's intelligence agents, officials say, are working with General Mohammed Fahim, who became defense chief of the Northern Alliance after Ahmed Shah Massoud was assassinated by two suicide bombers in September-an attack which U.S. intelligence believes was ordered by Mr. bin Laden. General Fahim is from the dominant group in the Northern Alliance, the Jamiat Islam, which occupies ethnic Tajik territory in the northeast part of the country.
But the C.I.A., an official said, has not established an effected working relationship with other factions within the Northern Alliance, including the Hazara group led by Muhammad Karim Khalili, the Uzbek faction led by Abdul Rashid Dostum and a Shiite group led by Karim Khalili. The difficulties in forcing a broad anti-Taliban coalition, however, do not stem only from Washington. The diverse array of groups that oppose the Taliban have done little to cement their union.
The attempt to create a grand coalition revolves around the 86- year-old former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, who lives in Rome. The exiled king is a Durrani Pashtun, like the Taliban leaders. The thinking is that he could serve as the symbolic head of a broad group that would include other Afghans who are not Pashtuns.
But the Northern Alliance and Pashtun leaders associated with the king have yet to convene an 120 member council to discuss proposals for a transitional government once the Taliban have been ousted and lay the foundation for a more formal loya jirga or traditional Afghan assembly. In fact, the alliance has yet to choose any of its 60 delegates for the council.
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