The Afghanistan dilemma

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Shelling of the peacekeepers' compound and an attempted coup against the Karzai interim government demonstrate there is still much cleanup ahead In Afghanistan. American and British crack special forces are chasing Al Qaida remnants, if for no other reason, to pick up valuable information about terrorism around the world in the post-9/11 era.

The plea for broadening peacekeeping forces – particularly from our European allies – is a siren call. And the reasons for not answering are multitudinous. True, when we abandoned Afghanistan in the post-Soviet War victory to its own and Pakistan’s megalomaniacal ISI’s devices, we created just the host for which Al Qaida was looking. We find more evidence daily how important it was for Osama Bin Ladin to have the Taliban whom he could bribe and intimidate to give him freedom to operate worldwide. The lesson, of course, is not only must that not happen again in Afghanistan but we must prevent it happening elsewhere.

As President Bush has said, that leads into the major nightmare that Iraq’s Sadaam Hussein, whose history of villainy is so horrendous we know him capable of anything, might team up with freelancing terrorists. The field is broad and inviting. It seems quite likely that– as the Israelis already claim – we will find Al Qaida tentacles reaching into the Israeli-Palestine imbroglio. And we also know dating back to the 60s that terrorists cross racial, ethnic, criminal, and ideological boundaries for operational success.

All this presents Washington with a huge dilemma: where to look first under the bed for new terrorist lairs while cleaning up the Afghanistan mess? Already U.S. forces are strung out from Bosnia to Zamboanga in pursuit of terrorist targets or potential not easy to prioritize. We have just taken on Yemen, for example, where a corrupt, until recently uncooperative government, has invited us in, thank you, to go after Al Qaida in its tribal areas abutting Saudi Arabia. It was there that the Yemenites – backed by Moscow during the Cold War – fought the Saudis [and Pakistanis on lend] in a small, ugly, guerrilla war. Or in southeastern Yemen [then part of Soviet satellite Aden] the Shah of Iran’s forces under British tutelage fought a similar long and nagging war against guerrillas threatening the most pro-Western of the Arab states, Oman. It doesn’t take much imagination to see Osama trying to nestle down in one of these areas to begin a campaign against his first enemy, the Saud family, and their oilfields.

For these and other reasons Gen. Franks and Washington are resisting pressure to enlarge the cleanup squad in Afghanistan – or rather, in the jargon of the day, to engage in nationbuilding. That’s despite the fact that in theory any peacekeeping buildup would draw manpower from our allies; Turkey, for example, with its large military manpower reserves is being urged, coaxed and pressured into taking over running the peacekeeping force.

But what isn’t said publicly, again for a variety of reasons, is that it is the U.S. that always must bear the brunt of the logistics support. That is, for all the European NATO allies’ cant about creating their own Rapid Deployment Force, their military budgets are declining. They would have to withdraw forces from their already straitened NATO commitments.. “Lift”, that is the ability to move large numbers of troops quickly, is the name of the game. The European allies – much less such sometimes-willing UN peacekeepers such as Malaysia or Nigerians – don’t have it. Note that the Germans rented “lift” from the Ukrainians [not even NATO members, nor candidates] when they sent a 1500-man contingent.

Given the long neglect of U.S. forces in a world without enemies that Washington dreamed into during the Clinton Administration’s near decade after the Gulf War, American capacities are stretched. There is concern, for example, that the Kitty Hawk homeported in Yokosuka, that most important of our overseas bases in Japan, might be needed in any Iraq operation – or before – but would risk denuding the Far East of its only aircraft carrier while a North Korean near-crisis percolates.

All this simply means that the U.S. will have to minimize its Afghanistan ratkilling campaign. Satisfied with destroying Al Qaida’s GHQ, Washington will have to eschew reconstruction. [No one has yet come forth with promised cash except the Indians and the Pakistanis – and the U.S., of course, although there are always European millions for Arafat] The solution lies with a program to build an Afghan national army and a campaign of threats and cajolery aimed at persuading its neighbors to let them rebuild in peace.[Alas! that includes Iran, a state terrorist country.]

It is not a satisfactory solution but probably the only one possible at the moment.