News Collage: Guerilla Warfare and the American Military

On November 25^th, the New York Times printed the following text: "... Law and Order Minister for Eastern Shura, Afghanistan, says Osama bin Laden was seen this week at the large and well-fortified encampment in Tora Bora; aides to [the minister] say as many as 2,000 'Afghan Arabs,' or foreign fighters, are at Tora Bora, armed with rifles, machine guns and surface-to-surface missiles."

On November 29^th, Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC's "Primetime Live" that bin Laden was in Tora Bora. "I think he was equipped to go to ground there," Mr. Cheney said. "He's got what he believes to be a fairly secure facility. He's got caves underground; it's an area he's familiar with."

By December 17^th, the battle for Tora Bora was considered completed. Two hundred of the original 2000 Afghan Arab fighters were confirmed dead and 21 captured. Bin Laden was not found. Haji Zahir was the commander of 600 Afghan mercenaries employed by the Americans to search caves after the battle. He complained to the Christian Science Monitor on March 4^th, "The only ones left inside for us were the stupid ones, the foolish and the weak."

The Tora Bora strategy was a simple one. The American military hired approximately 3000 Afghan mercenaries to encircle the Tora Bora mountain region. Once this perimeter was in place, the American Air Force carpet-bombed Tora Bora for several weeks, after which Afghan forces were sent in to capture and kill the remaining resistance.

Bernard F. Trainor is a retired Marine Lieutenant General and is now a military analyst at MSNBC. The following quote comes from his March 17^th Boston Globe article: "... At the battle for Tora Bora, we were told of great success using air power. It now appears that many if not most of the Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers survived the bombing and slipped away to fight another day ... the fact that enemy fire ceased under air bombardment does not mean that he was annihilated."

On December 30^th, CNN correspondent Nic Robertson reported on conversations that he had with Afghan commanders: "... they say all the Arabs are gone into Pakistan and they say they believe Osama bin Laden's gone with them."

On December 11^th, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld addressed the issue of the Pakistan border with the following public statement: "It's a long border. It's a very complicated area to try to seal, and there's just simply no way you can put a perfect cork in the bottle."

On March 2^nd, Operation Anaconda began in the Shah-i-Kot Valley. This conflict would differ from Tora Bora because of the involvement of the Army's 10^th Mountain Division. By March 3^rd, 8 American soldiers had been killed and every helicopter involved in the operation was downed. After March 3^rd, no American ground forces entered the valley. The carpet-bombing strategy was resumed with 2000 American and Afghan troops attempting to maintain a perimeter around 70 square miles of hostile mountain region.

On March 14^th, the New York Times published the following: "In this 12-day operation, American warplanes have dropped more than 2500 bombs. After initially putting the count [of opposition] at 150 to 200 fighters, American intelligence officials now believe as many as 1000 were holed up in the battle zone."

On March 18^th, Operation Anaconda was complete and considered a success. Fewer than 20 prisoners and few enemy bodies were found. Many Afghan commanders involved in the mission doubted its apparent success. In a March 19^th interview with Reuters, the Deputy Afghan Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim said, "Only 50 to 60 were killed. Most of them escaped. Most scattered across the mountains and fled." Canadian forces played a key role in the battle. The same day, Reuters interviewed Canadian Commodore Jean-Pierre Thiffault who said there had been "few" direct encounters with the enemy or sightings of enemy corpses.

One reason for the apparent failure could have been the terrain. While Afghans have battled and beaten superpowers like the Soviets and British in this high altitude desert region, the American Army has no such experience. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Lester Grau, a scholar in Soviet-Afghan tactics and battle history, recently coauthored "Ground Combat at High Altitude" for the Military Review. In the article, he says "the U.S. Army has no experience fighting in truly high mountains," and that its mountain training has been conducted at lower altitudes.

Not only was there concern over the number of enemy killed, there was also concern over the identity of that enemy. During the Operation, a Los Angeles Times article noted: "There remains considerable ambiguity about how much of the force resisting the Americans is al Qaeda members and how much of it is simply local Afghans." Some of this concern comes from the source of American intelligence in the area, the Khost warlord Zadran. StratFor, the Strategic Forecasting group, describes the concern: "It appears to us that Operation Anaconda began after U.S. commanders received intelligence from warlord Zadran (also known as Badsha Khan), who controls much of Khost, the province east of Paktia. Zadran's information has proven questionable in the past, prompting U.S. forces to attack and kill innocent Afghans he had identified as Taliban or al Qaeda members. The biggest blunder occurred Dec. 20, when Zadran triggered the U.S. blitz of a convoy of Paktia's elders that killed about 65 people."

Former Commander of NATO forces in Europe, General Wesley Clark, is skeptical about success in Afghanistan. During a March 22^nd interview with the UK Telegraph, he said there were "worrisome signs" that western forces were drifting into a position similar to that which assailed Soviet forces after their invasion in 1979. "They won big victories to start with. It took a year or two for the opposition to build up. We are a long way from this being over and it could still all go wrong."

George Tenet, director of the CIA, also warned the Armed Services Committee: "You're entering into another phase here that actually is more difficult, because you're probably looking at smaller units who intend to operate against you in a classic insurgency format."

There are those that feel the failure of the 10^th Mountain Division at Shah-i-Kot and the fact that Marines were the first troops into Afghanistan, a landlocked country, exemplify the declining condition of the American Army. Bob Krumm is a West Point graduate and the captain of the Army's Training and Doctrine command. He posted the following statement on the military-reform web site Defense and the National Interest (www.d-n-i.net): "My Army is operating equipment designed to fight Soviets and the stuff in the pipeline is just a more expensive version of the same. My Army trains to fight fictional forces in make-believe lands instead of focusing on real-world enemies and missions. My Army has one-half the number of generals as we did at the height of World War II, even though the force is one-tenth the size. The end result of all this is we get to watch the Marines perform Army missions because they can do them better."

According to the Center for Defense Information, the US spends $589,802 per minute on the military.

According to a New York Times article, "murder and rape and robbery" at the hands of the American-backed Northern Alliance has caused northern Pushtun and Kuchi to abandon their villages. Since the Americans arrived, the UN says 50,000 Pushtun and Kuchi refugees have gathered on the northern Pakistan border.

The Strategic Forecasting group views Anaconda as a major turning point in the war effort. "Ultimately Operation Anaconda will not finish off al Qaeda or even the Taliban fighters. Instead it signals the beginning of a protracted guerrilla war that will allow Afghanistan to continue to serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda."

Dr. Scilla Elworthy is the director of the Oxford Research Group and author of a recently published report on the success of the anti-terrorism campaign. The report concludes that "unless core issues of marginalization and disempowerment are addressed, the end result of responding to terror with violence will be increased support for groups like al Qaeda, and an expanded cycle of violence."

David Germain