Recent online cheap nike shoes,Commander Rakhmad Gol is enjoying himself. For the past six years he's been fighting a irritating war against the Taliban, usually enduring defeat, sometimes generating small but costly gains of territory. Now he's watching raptly as U.S. warplanes bomb Taliban positions just a few hundred yards away. He exults as a dark gray cloud of smoke and dust bursts in to the vibrant blue sky over the Shamali Plain. The boom from the explosion arrives a couple of seconds later. There, look, that was correct on target, he says, cheering the destruction of what he says was a Taliban tank and gun emplacement. The threadbare soldiers under Gol's command are getting into the spirit of things, as well. Walkie-talkies *****le as fighters hurl insults at the Taliban over a shared frequency. If the Americans give our government all the ***ist they can, says Abdul Sabur, who continues to be fighting in Afghanistan's caves and trenches for six of his 21 many years, we will finish this war quick.That is extremely unlikely. Gol and Sabur are sitting within the ruins of a shattered, three-story building of mud bricks. They appear out over a vista of rock walls, green scrub and a rutted track where shepherds occasionally drive their herds of fat-tailed sheep. Numerous of the 100-odd fighters hanging around are young teenagers with the Northern Alliance, the loose collection of anti-Taliban militias that manage about 10 % of Afghanistan. They are clad in easy tunics and scarves, and wear sandals and raggedy operating footwear. They generally sustain themselves on 1 meal each day. 4 days per week, they eat rice and beans; three days they get rice with bits of mutton. Most cannot tell you their precise age. They complain gently about their miserable clothing and poor gear. (So out of touch are the militiamen with other units that at another front lately, one commander asked reporters for utilization of their satellite phone to contact his common.) Although they are only 15 miles in the capital Kabul, these fighters know as well as anybody that it will be one of the longest journeys of their lives, and perhaps the final.Promises of fast victory, particularly in wars as messy and confused as this 1, have an nearly siren-song high quality. (Who doesn't want to think them?) And also the Pentagon's now emerging Northern Strategy to defeat the Taliban is doubly enticing because it appears, from Washington's viewpoint, relatively painless. Send in B-52 bombers, dispatch several teams of military advisers, paste the enemy in the security of 3 miles up and let your local allies do the nasty ground fighting. The Americans can provide lots of punch in the air, in addition to ammunition, communications and logistical know-how; the locals know the terrain and also the enemy. And with locally provided intelligence, the Americans can mount commando raids and Special Ops to get Osama bin Laden as well as other particular targets from Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership. But the new technique is fueled, in component, by impatience. The Pentagon now expects that even within the best-case scenario, the campaign will go nicely into subsequent spring. As a result, a faint air of desperation has set in amongst Washington policymakers, who appear to be jumping from 1 technique to an additional. First the aim was to surround and isolate the Taliban politically, hoping the movement would crumble from within. Then the bombing started using the hope that overwhelming air energy would force a Taliban collapse. Nobody truly needed to back the Northern Alliance, because Pakistan deeply opposes that method, and because the alliance--composed mainly of minority ethnic groups--was seen as unreliable and unable to supply a ****le alternative to Taliban rule. However the Bush administration, exhausted and distracted by continuous threats and anthrax attacks at home, is more and more hankering for some kind of visible victory abroad. It's also worried that the onset of winter will fairly much rule out an efficient ground campaign. Already final week the Pentagon blamed icy climate for the crashes of a Unique Forces helicopter along with a spy drone.NEWSWEEK has discovered that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld lately called in about a dozen Washington political consultants, among them Michael Deaver and Jody Powell, for what 1 described like a gut check on how the public perceives the war's progress. Meanwhile the State Division and Pentagon have begun fighting over whether to bring more NATO allies into the war (the Pentagon does not want them, fearing Kosovo-like confusion more than targeting and tactics).1 Pentagon insider says the White Home is putting relentless pressure on wary military planners for quick results. In particular, the administration is waiting impatiently to get a planned offensive against the strategic town of Mazar-e Sharif. The ***ault, maybe as early as this week, will be supported by U.S. Special Forces teams connected to various Northern Alliance militias. The job of those teams will be to keep the ***ault coordinated, give tactical advice, run logistics and contact in U.S. airstrikes. (Otherwise they'll not engage directly in combat.) A hurried offensive will probably be a large gamble, especially considering that within the final three weeks the Northern Alliance has really lost ground to the Taliban. If Mazar-e Sharif falls, the Taliban becomes more isolated than ever, cut off from a important supply route. But if the Taliban succeeds in repulsing the ***ault, it gets a huge m****e boost, and Washington faces an even colder winter than it does now.The strategy isn't only filled with dangers, but additionally historical echoes of previous disasters. The insertion of military advisers and dependence on unreliable surrogates recall Vietnam. The dangers of obtaining into a tribal conflict with fighters of remarkable fearlessness and cunning evoke Somalia. One of bin Laden's lieutenants has even warned that American corpses will be dragged through the streets of Afghanistan just as they had been in Mogadishu in 1993. Yet Afghanistan, though it has been a meat grinder to foreign invaders for hundreds of years, defies easy ****ogies. The North Vietnamese had superpower backing; the Taliban doesn't. And whilst the U.S. impulse was to leave Somalia after one horrific fire battle, comparable bloodshed in Afghanistan would likely harden American resolve in the wake of September 11.The Pentagon is wary of running its military campaign according to a political schedule, in part because it is uncertain the Northern Alliance is ready and in component simply because its personal forces are not totally in position. Military planners wish to send Special Forces teams into Taliban-controlled territory, for example. But to reduce the danger of a Mogadishu-style disaster, regular military doctrine now dictates that U.S. Special Forces should have backup teams on alert and close at hand. NEWSWEEK has learned that the United states desires a forward base for its Unique Forces in Uzbekistan. But President Islam Karimov, whilst allowing the United states to occupy an old Soviet air base in his country, has refused to permit American forces to use the base to launch raids into Afghanistan. (Negotiations are ongoing.)Gen. Tommy Franks, the commander with the U.S. war work, is stated by colleagues to become dubious of the Northern Alliance's capabilities. The alliance forces are believed to quan***y 15,000 to 20,000, most likely less than half the Taliban's strength. And they are not nicely educated or well equipped. Most are young soldiers like Sayeed Karim, who serves around the front line within the village of Rabat. When a bullet jams within the barrel of his Kalashnikov, Karim's solution would be to detach the barrel and to pound the cartridge out with a stick. Clad in sandals and a easy wool tunic, he worries that soon it'll be winter and we don't have any boots.The U.S. military has the capacity to airlift essential supplies. (The push to take Mazar-e Sharif is partly to capture the air base there, which could be utilized during the winter.) So presume the Northern Alliance surprises everybody and scores a lightning victory. What then? Alliance commanders really are a hodgepodge of warlords with a lengthy background of infighting, corruption and incompetence. The final time they captured Kabul, back in 1992, triumph soon degenerated into civil war as competing commanders feuded for turf. Many Afghans do not want the Northern Alliance back in power, a minimum of on their own. And neighboring Pakistan, a critical U.S. ally for supplying intelligence and support, desires a Kabul regime dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, which the Northern Alliance is not.Alliance leaders insist they've discovered from past mistakes, and claim they will not move into Kabul un-til they've produced cir***stances to get a ****le, ethnically rep-resentative administration. But plans to set up an alternative government have failed. And for nearby commanders, the motivating force is not to make a pluralistic government. It's revenge. Gen. Gol Heydar, a 40-year-old baker's son with six war wounds and an artificial leg, says that Taliban fighters can count on mercy only if they defect soon. Arab fighters from bin Laden's corps are out of luck no matter what they do: Even if they give up, he says matter-of-factly, we will kill them anyway.If American forces are focused on how to win on the ground in Afghanistan, bin Laden has his sights firmly on winning in Muslim (and nuclear-armed) Pakistan, where the U.S. bombing campaign is causing growing unrest. Bin Laden released a letter final week calling for Pakistanis to rise up against the government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, which he said was standing beneath the Christian banner.Here, as well, bin Laden might be successfully parrying U.S. efforts to obtain him. Part of the aim of U.S. attacks is to spur defections from Taliban ranks, yet a lot of the movement final week was within the opposite path. Pashtun tribesmen from Pakistan--armed with ancient muskets and AK-47s, axes and antiaircraft guns--streamed across the border of the wild North-West Frontier province. They wore white turbans--symbolizing solidarity with the Taliban--and sputtered with rage. I do not wish to live under an un-Islamic government in Pakistan, said Asal Din, 65. I favor to die using the Taliban, even beneath a U.S. rocket. For weeks the Taliban told the volunteers to remain put--don't contact us, we'll contact you was the message to would-be martyrs. Then final week they agreed to accept 600 fighters. Yet one,200 crossed the border on Thursday alone, despite the truth that Musharraf had officially banned Pakistanis from ***isting the Taliban.Musharraf is probably reluctant to use force to crush those defying him simply because he fears a ****** confrontation could split the country's one ****le ins***ution: the Army. After he joined the U.S. an***error coalition in September, Musharraf protectively removed 5 of his 14 most senior generals from key posts, including the director with the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. But many Army officers still sympathize using the Taliban, and entire units could refuse to act or perhaps cross over to join a rebellion. Some ****ysts worry what they call a Sadat scenario, in which Islamic militants within the Army ******inate Musharraf.Washington's Northern Technique can only make Musharraf's position much more uncomfortable. And it may be designed to do just that--and to push Pakistan to cobble collectively its own Afghan option towards the Taliban. But these efforts will take time, and Musharraf is worried, based on a supply familiar with his pondering, that the White Home is fighting a foreign war according to its own domestic political imperatives. He thinks the bombing began too soon, with out sufficient political preparation for a post-Taliban Afghanistan. He also believes the Northern Alliance would need months of training and equipping before they could quan***y to a serious fighting force. What will be the military campaign strategy? says a senior Pakistani supply. Do the Americans even have 1? Bin Laden does--and no one is more aware of that than Musharraf and his U.S. allies.Trend of the
posted by bakersshoess at 12:31 | in:
Unspecified
Permalink | email this post |
Comments
(0) | Add Comment