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Beyond Kabul
by JONATHAN FOREMAN
The New York Post, November 14, 2001

The recapture of Mazar-e-Sharif by the Afghan Northern Alliance - aided by U.S. and British special forces advisers - closely followed by the Taliban's withdrawal from Kabul, are cause for celebration but not necessarily self-congratulation: a stroke of good fortune rather than a confirmation that we have been fighting this war in the right way.

To be sure, it's good to hear that the men of the liberated cities are joyfully shaving off beards that the Taliban forced them to grow, that music once again blares in the bazaar and that girls are going back to school.

And it's quite possible that even in its southern strongholds the Taliban is on the brink of collapse.

But if not - if they have just retreated to a region they know is easier to defend - then this phase of the Terror War is far from over.

The fact that the Taliban took the time to destroy the Hazara town of Bamiyan and to murder hundreds of Hazara men before they pulled out on Monday may indicate that they are confident of resisting for a long time to come.

In that case, it would still be possible for America to lose - especially if our generals continue the tepid strategy we have pursued since 9/11.

After all, we don't need to lose in battle to be defeated. All we have to do is confirm the belief (still popular around the world) that the United States is an irresolute, impotent giant, unwilling to expose its own troops to significant danger. We have certainly given our enemies pause by showing what a difference our support can make even to allies as unpromising as the Northern Alliance.

But if Osama bin Laden continues to make his home in, and the Taliban continue to rule, Afghanistan's south in defiance of all our threats, we will be seen to have failed by those we most need to impress with our power and resolve. Our enemies remember, even if we would rather forget, that it took just 18 deaths to drive us out of Somalia. Nor have they forgotten that the fearfulness of Army brass during the Kosovo war meant that our Apache helicopter gunships were kept safe and snug at their Albanian base, while the Kosovar civilians we were there to protect were being murdered. And if we are not to lose the propaganda war - i.e. the war - then the taking of Mazar and Kabul must be followed up as quickly as possible.

That means that the Northern Alliance should capitalize on its triumph by immediately securing Herat (unconfirmed reports say it may already have fallen), the strategically important Taliban city that controls one of the two roads to Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold.

It means that our aircraft should be strafing and bombing Taliban forces as they pull back to their mountainous strongholds in the south and east. The Northern Alliance should be handing over all Arab, Pakistani and other foreign prisoners to U.S., British or Turkish special forces for interrogation. They may have vital information about al Qaeda.

At the same time, our own generals must avoid the temptation to think they have managed to pull off a victory without having had to commit ground troops.

They should develop Mazar as a bridgehead and a base for operations, preferably by moving an American unit like the 10th Mountain Division into the captured city, while other U.S. forces secure a wide perimeter around the city's airport, to allow the operation of AC-130s and helicopters and even Harrier jump-jets to operate from within Afghanistan. (Once the area around recaptured Kabul has been properly secured, we can also use its airport.)

Speed is of the essence because of the imminence of winter and the fragility over time of both the "coalition" and domestic support. It is also a moral imperative: The longer the war, the more civilians are likely to suffer. And the sooner that Afghanistan's famine-threatened north and northeast are under full Northern Alliance control, the easier it will be to provide humanitarian aid, free of Taliban interference.

Unfortunately, this urgency is something that our military leadership has hitherto taken remarkably little account of; its Afghan strategy often seemed made up of equal parts hope and nostalgia. The nostalgia was for other wars when a slowly intensifying bombing campaign did the trick - wars against urban societies like Milosevic's Yugoslavia - where the United States could get away for as long as possible with avoiding the use of ground troops (with the exception of special forces as target designators).

As a result, our small, careful air campaign (often fewer than 50 sorties a day, compared to over 1,000 at the peak of the Kosovo war) took a very long time to get going.

On the other hand, despite ludicrous claims that the Ranger paratroop raid was a "near disaster," our largest and most public commando mission was in fact a success, and not just because it was carried out without a single fatality.

Even if it's true that Taliban resistance to the raid was unexpectedly fierce, or that little useful intelligence was found in Mullah Omar's compound or that the (videotaped) raid was in large part a (successful) public relations exercise, the very fact that we dared use ground troops in a non-covert operation behind enemy lines was highly significant.

The reason we must build on this mission and use ever greater force in Afghanistan has to do with the internal logic of coalitions and the phenomenon that political scientists call "bandwagoning" - the tendency of people to rush to the winning side in a conflict.

If we are seen to be winning in Afghanistan - winning in a way obvious to people on the ground - then we'll finally see not only defections from the Taliban by some of the Pashtun tribes, but even a change in the political atmosphere in Pakistan and elsewhere. When that happens, gathering vital human intelligence on the al Qaeda network and its allies will become much easier.

If, on the other hand, the Northern Alliance advance stalls - and it may be unwilling or unable to enter the Pathan-dominated south - and we continue our relatively desultory bombing raids until winter comes, this could all too easily undermine our position in the region. After all, until Mazar, our basic lack of results (however the Pentagon spokesmen tried to spin things) brought pro-Taliban volunteers flocking from Pakistan.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of using the Afghan campaign to demonstrate America's power and resolution, to intimidate in a profound way those who hate us.

The price of failure in Afghanistan would be catastrophic. Even a stalemate would give a massive boost to Islamist extremism from Morocco to Indonesia - while crippling the coalition such as it is, and spreading dangerous political fallout here in the United States.

And that extremist tendency, buoyed by victory, would have no incentive not to attack us at home again and again.