In December last year, with the capture of the Tora Bora caves, it seemed that all that remained for the Afghan forces and their US and British allies was to mop up the last remnants of the Taleban and Al-Qaeda fighters and pick up their leaders. Yet, four months on, the Afghan Army is encountering significant resistance and has started once more to take casualties. It can with justice be asked how a defeated force, seemingly worn down by US bombing raids and aggressive Special Forces activities, can suddenly turn and hold its pursuers at bay?
The problem for the outside world is that information is hard to come by. Journalists are not allowed to operate freely in the operational areas. US media handlers emphasize that the reporters who do venture into the fighting zone are taking their lives in their hands. The murder of Daniel Pearl still fresh in everybody’s mind, such warnings about safety carry a lot of weight. But this lack of close coverage is unfortunate, because since the international community is being asked to underwrite the billions of dollars necessary to rebuild the country, it deserves to be kept in genuine touch with what is really going on in Afghanistan.
Keeping the media lid on the campaign, however good the excuse, makes people suspicious. Journalists have already been able to observe that certain so-called anti-Taleban or anti-Al-Qaeda operations have, upon analysis, turned out to be tribal fighting with no real connection with either. Old scores are being settled among rival tribesmen. If a warlord can win the ear of the government in Kabul, he will often find himself being cleared to attack a rival, entirely innocent of any Taleban or terrorist connections. If he is really lucky, he will even be assigned a US liaison officer, through whom he can call down B52 strikes on his enemy’s villages.
Nevertheless, even allowing for the falsehood underlying some operations, the fact remains that a force of up to 5,000 is holding out in the Shah-e-Kot mountains. It is said that once more they are working from cave complexes, every bit as formidable as in Tora Bora. Though they are being bombed and bombarded, they appear to have artillery as well as mortars. More intriguingly, they do not appear to be short of any ammunition and supplies. This may be a consequence of the fact that among the local people on both the Afghan and Pakistan sides of the border, there are some who, through family ties, feel a basic sympathy with the Taleban and Al-Qaeda. They are prepared to connive at the smuggling of arms and ammunition.
True, Islamabad promised that it would isolate the arms smuggling areas on its border and deal strictly with any local warlord who did not fall into line behind the US anti-terrorist coalition. However it promised something that it could not deliver. In many border areas, it is what the locals decide, not what the government orders, that count.
So, it would seem that the “defeated” forces are inflicting casualties on the Afghan government army and its US advisers. Washington must not repeat the foolish lies that were told as US involvement in Vietnam deepened. If the anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan is going wrong, however temporarily, the US should say so.
