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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BigBull who wrote (34276)	7/14/2002 5:50:54 PM
From: Dayuhan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I would guess that it's possible to deploy and supply an armored force by air, but I would also guess that there are limits to the size of the force that could be delivered and supported. Those mountains empty into plains. A nice chunk of those plains are in Kurd territory This underscores the single biggest problem of operating on this front. Any such operation will require the assistance of both Turkey and the Kurds. The Turks and the Kurds don't much care for each other. The Kurds are downplaying their desire for a state and their willingness to use force to achieve that goal because they want American support. I doubt that the Turks believe them. I'm not even sure I believe them myself (it could be argued that the Kurds deserve a State; I am not going to go into that). The problem is that one of the Turkish conditions for support is likely to be that the Kurds do not receive arms, training, and support for autonomy. All three are likely to be high on the Kurdish quid pro quo list. I'm not saying that these issues can't be resolved, at least for long enough to mount a campaign against Saddam. I'm just wondering if the people who confidently declare that there will be a three-pronged assault on Saddam have really worked through the issues raised by the locations of those prongs. I also wonder if these "leaks" of strategy weren't intentional. I think there's a psy-war component here, and I think we'll see a lot more of it. I'd expect a very prominent buildup, with much attention lavished on the overwhelming size of the force, the amount of air power to be deployed, the technological sophistication of the armaments. I'd expect to see stress placed on the notion of massive attacks from multiple directions. I'd also expect a good deal of talk about how military units and officers that defect will be likely to have a place in the post-Saddam Iraqi military. This might be seen by some as giving away the plan and allowing preparations, but I think it might be a fairly smart move in the long run. The plan isn't likely to stay secret in any event. It seems fairly certain that a fair number of Iraqi soldiers will bail out, and that some will also hole up in urban areas and fight it out. One of our primary goals has to be to move as many Iraqi units as possible into the first group and out of the second. This effort has three components. Iraqi soldiers and officers have to be convinced that the forces arrayed against them are too powerful to be effectively resisted, that those who surrender will receive lenience, and that those who do not surrender will die horribly. If these three messages can be effectively delivered, the actual combat phase may become much easier. I think that one of the biggest problems of the Iraqi campaign may turn out, paradoxically, to be Afghanistan. We all saw the recently released story that quoted German Intelligence officers saying that OBL was alive and somewhere along the Afghan/Pakistani border. The same reports said that some 5000 Taliban and Al Qaeda troops were also spread out in that large area. That has to make one think. What happened in our Afghan war? The Northern Alliance, supported by US and British Special Forces, marched against the Taliban and drove them out. We declared victory, with much thumping of chests. Was it really that simple? Did the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces really "lose", or did they just spread out and back off, in classic guerilla fashion, to wait until the foreigners went home and the Northern Alliance started to break up in political bickering? Here's a nasty scenario to consider: Just as we set up for our Iraq campaign, Pakistani Islamists, with or without the tacit cooperation of Islamist elements in the Pakistani armed forces, slip into Kashmir and initiate a string of high-profile terrorist attacks on Indian civilians. India masses forces on the border. Pakistan does the same. The Pakistani army has a perfect excuse to ignore the Afghan border. As we move on Iraq, those 5000 Taliban and Al Qaeda troops, possibly reinforced by a substantial number of Pakistani sympathizers, move back into Afghanistan. Will the Afghan government be able to provide credible resistance? Will the US and allied forces be able to support their own presence there? All very hypothetical, yes, but it would not surprise me at all if the Iraqi campaign is a catalyst for renewed conflict in Afghanistan....