COVERT action is frequently a substitute for policy, was an aphorism first coined by the former director of the CIA Richard Helms. Its truth is exemplified by the decision of President George Bush in July to secretly give orders that US special forces will in future carry out raids against ground targets inside Pakistan, without getting the approval of the Pakistani government.
Bush’s order is fraught with peril for the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. In one respect, it is a recognition at long last by Bush that the Taleban and their Al-Qaeda allies could not stay in business without the backing of Pakistan. This is hardly surprising, since it was Pakistani military intelligence which largely created them in the first place.
It was always absurd for the White House and the Pentagon to pour praise on the former Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf as their greater ally against terrorism, despite the clearest evidence that it was the Pakistani Army which has been keeping the Taleban going since 2001.
True to Helms’ nostrum, Bush has not adopted a new policy, but is resorting to covert operations, the political disadvantages of which are obvious, and military benefits dubious. A good example of this is the first of these operations undertaken under the new dispensation. On Sept. 3, two dozen US Navy Seals were helicoptered into South Waziristan in Pakistan, where they attacked a compound, aided by an AC-130 gunship. When they retreated, they said they had killed many Al-Qaeda fighters, though a senior Pakistani official later said that the true casualty figures were four Taleban and Al-Qaeda “foot soldiers” and 16 civilians, including women and children.
It is a curious way to usher in democracy in Pakistan. Once Pakistan emerges from its preoccupation with the Ramadan fast, it will create nothing but anger among Pakistanis. It will alienate the Pakistani Army, which has been humiliated and disregarded. Politically, it only makes sense in terms of American politics, where it will be seen as a sign that the administration is doing something in Afghanistan. It also diverts attention from embarrassing questions about why the Taleban is such a potent force seven years after it had supposedly been destroyed in 2001.
Use of covert forces to achieve political ends with limited means has always held a fatal attraction for political leaders. CIA officials have become used to being dumped with insoluble problems, with peremptory orders to “Get rid of Khomeini” or “Eliminate Saddam.” Plots to do just that are the common theme of a thousand Hollywood movies, which revolve around the dispatch of elite forces into enemy territory, where they successfully dispatch some local demon.
In reality, covert warfare seldom works. Up-to-date intelligence is hard to come by. Take, for instance, the repeated claims by the US Air Force that it had killed Saddam Hussein during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. This was meant to be based on up-to-the minute information, much of which turned out to be spurious. Of course Saddam had survived, though not the poor civilians who had the ill luck to live or work where the Iraqi leader was meant to be.
The media plays a particularly nasty role in all of this. Stories of the attempts to kill Saddam Hussein were given maximum publicity. Their total failure was hardly mentioned. The reaction of the Pentagon to the killing of large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan has traditionally been first to deny that it ever happened. The denial is based on the old public relations principle that “first you say something is no news and didn’t happen. When it is proved some time late, that it did happen, you yawn and say it is old news.”
Covert operations only really succeed when they have strong local allies who want outside support. There are two recent outstanding examples of this. In Afghanistan in 2001, US Special Forces reinforced the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance and, most importantly, gave them forward air controllers who could call in airstrikes. Two years later, US Special Forces played a similar role in northern Iraq, when they provided air support to Kurdish troops attacking Saddam’s retreating army.
But if covert forces are acting alone, they are very vulnerable. What will happen to them in Pakistan if they get in a firefight with regular Pakistani forces? What will they do if they are ambushed by local tribesmen allied to the Taleban? Usually, the first to flee in these circumstances are the local civil authorities and the civilian population, so the Taleban will be even more in control than they were before.
Helms’ dictum was right. The Bush administration got itself into a no-win situation in Afghanistan. “The US attack on Iraq,” writes the Pakistani expert Ahmed Rashid, in his newly published Descent into Chaos, “was critical to convincing Musharraf that the United States was not serious about stabilizing the region, and that it was safer for Pakistan to preserve its own national interest by clandestinely giving the Taleban refuge.”
The covert action in Pakistan is merely an attempt to divert attention from the consequences of this bankrupt American policy.
