Rashid on CA in real time

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

< http://www.feer.com >
THE COMING WAR

The War Starts Here
By Ahmed Rashid/ISLAMABAD
Issue cover-dated September 27, 2001


AS UNITED STATES forces mobilize to attack Osama bin Laden's terrorist
networks in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks
in New York and Washington, the world enters a new era dominated by a
global fear of terrorism and the deepening divide between the Muslim
world and the West. The total war against bin Laden and Afghanistan's
Taliban being planned in the White House will dramatically reshape the
political map of South Asia and Central Asia and lead to rapid changes
in regional alliances.

Instead of merely dealing with the threat of terrorism, the magnitude
of the U.S. response could unravel the region.

"Bin Laden and the Taliban believe they are about to draw the U.S.
into the trap that devoured the Soviet Union, and if we lash out
without a political and strategic plan for the region, they could be
right," warns Barnett Rubin, a prominent Afghan scholar and Director
of the Centre on International Cooperation at New York University.

Clearly the risks are huge. There could also be benefits. In Pakistan,
the military could finally delink itself from support to Islamic
fundamentalists and the growing culture of so-called jihad, or holy
war, undermining the country. Pakistan could rebuild ties with the
West and improve relations with India. The Central Asian republics may
finally be rid of the militant Islamic opposition movements based in
Afghanistan and concentrate on improving economic and democratic
reforms--or dissolve into greater authoritarianism and poverty. And in
Afghanistan, a U.S.-led alliance could help reconstruct a new
government which could finally bring peace after 23 years of war.

On the other hand, as the U.S. offensive is drawn out, Pakistan could
unravel and Islamic militants take to the streets, under pressure from
the Islamic fundamentalists that are a growing force in the country.
Afghanistan could descend into the warlordism that dominated it in the
early 1990s (and cleared the way for Taliban rule), creating around
the world a flood of refugees and angry new recruits for terrorist
organizations.

Within hours of the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre,
President Bush said America was at war with international terrorists.
"Those who make war on the United States have chosen their own
destruction," he said on September 15 after declaring a national state
of emergency. He warned that the U.S. response would be "a conflict
without battlefields or beachheads" and that "the conflict will not be
short." He pledged to build an international alliance through Nato and
other allies.

The U.S. has identified 19 suspected hijackers as belonging to bin
Laden's Al-Qaeda organization, which is based in Afghanistan. As the
U.S. mobilized 50,000 reservists and began to ship and airlift men and
supplies to its main depot in the region--the island of Diego Garcia
in the Indian Ocean--it began to seek support from landlocked
Afghanistan's neighbours. Pakistan, Russia, China, India, Iran and the
Arab world all face a critical moment in their relationships with both
the Islamic world and the West. Critical among them, China has already
voiced support , as has India.

The big question was Pakistan. Within 24 hours of the attacks
Washington was pounding on Islamabad's door looking for bases and
support. Islamabad has spent the past seven years providing military,
political and financial support to the Taliban. A reversal by
Pakistani leader Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf would invite an intense
backlash from Islamic fundamentalist parties and the officer corps of
the military.

Late on September 14, after a seven-hour meeting with his generals,
Musharraf summoned U.S. Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin to say his
government would give total support to a U.S.-led multinational force
to be based in Pakistan. The conditions: Pakistani forces would not
cross into Afghanistan, and the U.S.-led force would need a UN mandate
and must exclude Indian and Israeli involvement (though not the use of
Indian territory to stage attacks).

Pakistani and Western diplomats told the Review that Islamabad had
accepted 18 U.S. demands. Among the most critical will be Pakistan's
agreement to share intelligence on bin Laden and the Taliban. It also
committed to closing its borders with Afghanistan so that an estimated
3,000 members of Al-Qaeda do not escape into Pakistan.

What Musharraf has agreed to is essentially a policy U-turn. For 20
years the Pakistan military has attempted to bolster Islamic groups to
fight its proxy wars in Afghanistan and Kashmir--support which has
rapidly spread the culture of jihad that now poses a threat to its own
national security. At present, 3,000-4,000 Pakistani Islamic militants
are fighting alongside the Taliban, while thousands more Pakistani and
Kashmiri militants train in Afghanistan for the war in Kashmir.

"Reversing this policy will not be easy," admits a retired Pakistani
general.

Musharraf has since been lobbying politicians, religious leaders and
the media in order to woo a sceptical public. "The present critical
situation requires a unified response from the nation," Musharraf said
on September 16. Pakistan has already enacted stringent security
measures to avert terrorist attacks within its borders.

Musharraf will have to do even more. He will need to crack down on
Islamic extremists in Pakistan who provide Al-Qaeda with logistics,
communications and other support. He will have to ban Pakistani groups
that could pose a threat to U.S. forces, such as Harakat ul-Mujahideen
and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which are listed by Washington as terrorist
organizations. The largest Pakistani party fighting in Kashmir,
Laskar-e-Toiba, is on the U.S. terrorist watchlist. Stopping their
activities would lead to an intense political backlash.

A backlash has already begun. Prominent Pakistani Maulana Samiul Haq
heads a string of madrassas--the Islamic religious schools that also
serve, in Pakistan, as preparatory academies for jihad--that many
Taliban leaders attended in the early 1990s. Haq, who also leads the
pro-Taliban fundamentalist alliance in Pakistan known as the Afghan
Defence Council, publicly threatened Musharraf on September 14, saying
Musharraf must be "mindful of the sentiments of his under-command."

Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest
Islamic political party, told a religious meeting on September 15 that
"we will oppose the attack on Afghanistan tooth and nail and force the
Pakistan government not to become a party to it." Several retired
generals and former chiefs of the Pakistani intelligence service, the
ISI, known for their hardline Islamic views, were even more
provocative--claiming that the bombings in the U.S. were carried out
as part of an Israeli-Jewish conspiracy in league with the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency in order to give Israel a free hand to
crush the Palestinians and defame Muslims.

The effect of the international crisis is already being felt on the
Pakistan economy, which was fragile prior to September 11. With the
temporary closure of markets, enormous capital flight and rupee value
tumbling as banks buy dollars, the country will soon need emergency
financial support from abroad. Concessions to the U.S. could bring a
major write-off of Pakistan's $38 billion in foreign debt. On the
other hand, an economic meltdown would only serve to strengthen
Pakistan's fundamentalists.

In contrast to the uproar in Pakistan, India's support for the U.S.
has been unambiguous in the days following the attacks. That's because
along with the U.S. and Israel, India is also a target for militants
pursuing a global jihad, namely in Kashmir. India has supported
Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, also known as the United Front, in an
effort to destabilize the Taliban, and wants Pakistan to stop helping
the groups that cross into Kashmir and carry out attacks there.
According to The Times of India, the Indian government has offered
three air bases as well as port facilities on its Western seaboard for
use in a U.S. offensive.

India's main goal is to keep pressure on Pakistan, though not to the
point of collapse. "We'd be at the receiving end of the detritus,"
says Bharat Karnad of the Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

"The last thing India wants is a failed state on its border," says a
senior Indian diplomat. "We want a Pakistan that sees itself
coexisting with its neighbours, rather than one using jihad as a tool
of state policy."

Meanwhile, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar threatened that the
Taliban would attack any neighbouring country that provided military
bases for a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. "It is not impossible that
we would attack such a country under compulsion and the mujahideen
would have to enter the territory of such a country," Omar said from
the Taliban's base in Kandahar on September 15.

His invective followed the failure of two days of secret talks between
Omar and senior officers of the ISI in Kandahar to persuade Omar to
hand over bin Laden. ISI chief Lt.-Gen. Mehmood Ahmed returned on
September 17 for further talks. As the REVIEW went to press over 1,000
Taliban officials had gathered in Kabul to debate bin Laden's
extradition and under what conditions they would agree to it.

As the threat of a U.S. attack mounts, Omar, bin Laden and Arab and
Afghan hardliners around them will stand increasingly isolated. The
Taliban, dominated by the Pashtun ethnic group, are deeply
factionalized. Moderate Taliban leaders in Kabul have started to send
their families out of harm's way to Pakistan. Many of them will desert
if they see a credible Pashtun alternative. That is why U.S. officials
knowledgeable on Afghanistan are advocating that the U.S. help create
an anti-Taliban armed force in the belt of southern Afghanistan in
which the ethnic Pashtun dominate. Such a force would express its
loyalty to former King Zahir Shah, who has stepped up efforts to call
a Loya Jirga, or tribal council, of all Afghans in a bid to set up an
alternative government.

"We are looking at a defining moment, if only we will grasp the
opportunity," says a senior U.S. official in Washington. "It is
especially important that this international alliance be more than a
military enterprise so that it can help shape a post-Taliban/bin Laden
Afghanistan." Last year Washington provided $100,000 to Loya Jirga
efforts. At the end of September, Nato and the European Union will
hold meetings which are expected to endorse this process.

Further destabilizing the Taliban, tens of thousands of refugees have
fled Kabul, Kandahar and the eastern city of Jalalabad since the
attack on the U.S., according to the United Nations refugee agency.
Many are headed for villages within Afghanistan, while others are
headed to the Pakistani and Iranian borders. The "critical"
humanitarian situation may soon deteriorate as aid agencies evacuate
staff, says the UN. Pakistan is already host to 2 million Afghan
refugees, with 1.5 million refugees in Iran.

Meanwhile Russia, Iran and India have stepped up their military
support to the anti-Taliban United Front, whose leader, Ahmad Shah
Masud, was assassinated on September 9 by two suicide bombers who
allegedly belonged to Al-Qaeda. Masud's forces, who control just 10%
of Afghanistan, are presently battling some 25,000 Taliban troops.
United Front leaders have offered their support to the U.S. coalition,
and their forces could play a critical role in finding targets and
reducing Afghan civilian casualties.

U.S. forces are also going to need bases in the Central Asian
Republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan or Turkmenistan, which border
Afghanistan. But bases will not be offered without clearance from
Moscow, which is playing hard to get. Even though Russian President
Vladimir Putin strongly condemned the terrorist attacks and pledged
support for U.S. air strikes on Afghanistan, Russian officials have
said they will not allow U.S. or Nato forces to be based in the
region. Russia appears to be taking a bargaining position from which
it can extract concessions from Washington.

For Iran, Afghanistan's western neighbour, the U.S. will have to
reassure leaders that its military action will pose no threat. Iran
will also want to be consulted about the nature of any future
government in Kabul (see Intelligence, page 8). The U.S. is also
rapidly mustering Arab support and troops from Saudi Arabia and the
Gulf states to join the multinational force--not an easy task with
current Arab anger at Washington for coddling Israel.

Enlisting Arab support is critical if Washington is to appease the
Islamic world's fear that a war of civilizations between Islam and
Christianity is about to break out. "Washington needs to demonstrate
to ordinary Muslims that this is a global effort against terrorism
which Muslim countries support," says the retired Pakistani general.

Islamabad is also keen to enlist Saudi support as a means to provide
political cover at home. On September 15, a high-level Saudi military
delegation arrived in Islamabad to discuss military cooperation.

There is no doubt that the U.S. will face major military difficulties
in Afghanistan, where the terrain of high mountains and deserts is
extreme. There are few obvious targets and overexposure of U.S. forces
could lead to a wider backlash by the fiercely nationalistic Afghans,
who in the last two centuries have defeated British and Soviet
invaders. The U.S. is unlikely to occupy major portions of Afghan
territory, but will need to use ground troops and commandos. Missile
strikes alone, which the U.S. carried out in 1998 against bin Laden's
camps, are unlikely to succeed.

America's effectiveness will ultimately depend on how Washington sees
its military campaign in the region--as merely an attack on terrorism
or a broader attempt to restructure Afghanistan, push the peace
process between India and Pakistan and help the Central Asian regimes.
Emotional and angry demands are being made by many Americans for
instant and overpowering retaliation that could devastate the region
if the U.S. moves in without a clear-cut political and military
strategy. Paul Wolfowitz, the U.S. deputy secretary of defence, spoke
ominously of "ending states who sponsor terrorism."

Says Rubin, "The more U.S. action is seen as an act of revenge, the
greater the risks of it failing. The more it is seen as meting out
justice, the greater support it will muster."

Joanna Slater in Mumbai contributed to this article