WASHINGTON, 6 October 2003 — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld calls the US military operation in Afghanistan a success, but two years into the mission Osama Bin Laden and Taleban leader Mulla Muhammed Omar remain elusive and aid workers complain of deteriorating security.
Two years ago this week, President George W. Bush launched a war in Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America blamed on Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist Taleban government, headed by Mulla Omar, that harbored the guerrilla network.
A unique US war plan relying on air power, stealthy special forces and collaboration with Afghan opposition fighters swept the Taleban from power in short order and scattered Bin Laden and his followers.
But bringing stability to an impoverished country battered by conflict since 1979 and with a history of upheaval dating back to ancient times has proved a more daunting task, even for the world’s only superpower.
“People need to understand that the political situation in and around Afghanistan is intractable. It’s an almost insoluble challenge,” said analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute.
“If we just take the simple example of our inability to find Osama Bin Laden, when you look at the terrain, you look at the ethnic frictions, you look at the ambivalence of the Pakistanis, it isn’t hard to see why our strategy was going to produce mixed results.”
The mission, which began with air strikes on Oct. 7, 2001, is consuming US manpower and money, and there is no timetable for the end of American involvement. The Pentagon said 89 US troops have died in combat and accidents.
Nearly 10,000 US troops are in Afghanistan, hunting Al-Qaeda and Taleban forces and searching for Bin Laden and Mulla Omar, as well as helping reconstruction efforts. US and Afghan officials say Bin Laden and Mulla Omar may be hiding in the rugged tribal belt between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For the fiscal year that started this month, Bush has asked Congress for $11 billion to fund the US military effort and $800 million for Afghan reconstruction.
Rumsfeld labels the operation a “success” and says the United States has kept its military “footprint” modest.
“In the last analysis, the task is to create an environment that’s hospitable for people, for investment, for enterprise, for commerce,” US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said in Kabul last month.
“Each time I come back ... I see progress here. I see a greater amount of economic activity. I see improved security. And it is reassuring.”
Others are less reassured. US-backed President Hamid Karzai’s central government has limited influence outside Kabul, a 5,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force is concentrated in the capital, and Taleban officials have claimed to control pockets of territory.
“The security situation in Afghanistan has really sharply deteriorated in the last year,” said Pat Carey, senior vice president of the relief organization CARE, which has been in Afghanistan for three decades and has 700 staff members there working on water, agriculture and other needs.
Carey said attacks on relief workers are on the rise, with two aid workers killed on Sept. 24. Carey added that production of opium poppies is ballooning, and Afghanistan again has become the world’s top supplier.
Carey estimated that $20-$30 billion is needed to rebuild Afghanistan, and noted Bush’s Iraq reconstruction sum of $20.3 billion was more than 20 times higher than his Afghanistan request.
The US military touts improvements in Afghanistan.
“Right now, there is more security and stability in most of Afghanistan than there’s been for the last 24 years,” Army Col. Rodney Davis, spokesman for US forces in Afghanistan, said by telephone from Bagram Air Base north of Kabul.
“We believe that militarily we’ve been victorious,” Davis added, saying whenever fighters loyal to Al-Qaeda, the Taleban and Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar mass their forces in numbers greater than 10 “we kill them.”
Davis said the US military shifted focus in July to “stability operations.”
“We’re setting the stage for reconstruction to take off,” Davis said, noting the deployment of four civilian-military Provincial Reconstruction Teams of about 100 people, with four more planned in coming months.
“Afghanistan is a good-news story,” Davis said. “We see results on a daily basis.”
