By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 21, 2001; Page A01
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 20 -- In their words and their actions,
Afghanistan's Taliban rulers are revealing a military strategy that relies on
U.S. reluctance to take casualties and the legendary ability of Afghan
guerrillas to endure prolonged hardships in the mountains of the rugged
country. The hide-and-wait tactics -- tested during more than two decades of irregular
warfare -- assume new importance now that the United States has moved into the
ground phase of its battle to dislodge the Taliban and hunt down accused
terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. As the tough Afghan winter settles in, Taliban
fighters could seek to capitalize on the country's natural obstacles to
frustrate U.S. commando raids such as the one mounted early this morning near
the southern city of Kandahar. For two weeks, as high-flying U.S. warplanes pummeled targets across
Afghanistan, the Taliban military has sought mainly to survive, unable to fight
back effectively with its primitive air defenses. Now that U.S. soldiers have
begun raids on the ground, Taliban officials express confidence that the fight
will become more even, with guerrillas hiding and letting U.S. troops come to
them just as Afghan mujaheddin did against the Soviets in the 1980s. "We are eagerly awaiting the American troops to land on our soil, where we
will deal with them in our own way," said Jalaluddin Haqqani, a senior Taliban
commander renowned for his role in the battle against Soviet occupation. "I tell you the Soviets were a brave enemy, and their soldiers could
withstand tough conditions. The Americans are creatures of comfort," he said in
an interview today with the Pakistani newspaper the News. Haqqani was in
Pakistan for meetings with the government on the Taliban's role in a future,
broad-based Afghan government, the Foreign Ministry said. American soldiers "will not be able to sustain the harsh conditions that
await them," Haqqani said. ". . . Afghanistan will prove to be the graveyard of
the Americans." Haqqani, a strategic adviser to the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar, was
displaying a bluster common to military commanders. But he was also describing
the patient strategy that Taliban troops seem to be pursuing since the bombs
began to fall Oct. 7. According to refugees and aid organizations with Afghan employees, the
Taliban military has dispersed equipment such as tanks and artillery, seeking to
save it from marauding U.S. warplanes, and has spread most of its 40,000-man
force around urban residential areas and the countryside to rob U.S. jets of
concentrated military targets. A Pentagon official agreed with this assessment, saying that, "so far the
Taliban isn't concentrating resources. They're staying dispersed." Partly as a result, Taliban officials said, military casualties have not been
heavy. One aid worker who just returned from Kabul said Taliban leaders there
are "cheered by the low casualty figures." Refugees from Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual and political base and Omar's
headquarters before the bombing, said Taliban forces there have fanned out in
two directions. "They are either heading into the mountains and caves, or they
are entering populated areas," said an aid worker who arrived this morning in
Quetta, on the Pakistani side of the border. He said Taliban forces have largely evacuated their camps and military
installations to avoid U.S. airstrikes. The leadership, he said, left for caves
and other secure areas in the mountains, but the rank and file remained and have
cached some of their heavy weapons in residential neighborhoods. In Kabul as well, aid workers said, Taliban leaders have moved military
equipment to scattered sites outside the city or have kept moving it around to
avoid U.S. warplanes. Only in the plains north of Kabul has the Taliban mobilized large numbers of
troops in one area. This was to create a buffer against any advance by the
Northern Alliance rebel groups, whose front lines for the last several years
have been about 40 miles north of the capital. Many of the troops in these defensive lines were drawn from the 5,000 to
15,000 Arabs incorporated into the Taliban army, part of those attracted to
Afghanistan for training by bin Laden and his al Qaeda organization. According
to experts here and Northern Alliance leaders, they are among the Taliban's most
motivated fighters. The Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef, said the Taliban
military leadership has decided to "safeguard" its ammunition and military
capabilities as much as possible to await the arrival of U.S. ground troops and
winter. Zaeef, a former military commander, spoke to reporters in Islamabad
after consultations in Kandahar with Omar and other senior Taliban leaders. "We are going to exercise patience," he said. According to Pakistani experts, the destruction of Taliban airports, air
defense batteries and command and control centers has not changed the equation
dramatically on the ground. The radical Islamic militia functions as a low-tech
guerrilla force, they noted, and transmits more orders by hand-carried pieces of
paper than by encrypted military radios. "All this is bunkum, that their command and control system has been
destroyed," snorted retired Gen. Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence agency. "They have no command and control
system." Haqqani, who has had differences with the Taliban leadership and has been
cited as a possible defector, said in the interview that the movement's
leadership remains united behind Omar, who has the Islamic title Leader of the
Faithful. Haqqani's loyalty is key; he lives in Khost, which is near the border
with Pakistan in Paktia province and is the site of a cave system used by the
mujaheddin to hide from Soviet forces. Ali Jalali, Farsi language chief for the Voice of America and a former Afghan
army colonel who has written extensively on the country's military, has
suggested that bin Laden and his followers could also use the impenetrable Jawar
cave system, also in Paktia province, to hide from U.S. troops. Combing the
caves would likely produce U.S. casualties, unless it could be done by
anti-Taliban Afghan guerrillas with experience from the 1980s, he told reporters
in New York. Taliban officials have derided U.S. attempts to enlist such anti-Taliban
leaders, saying the country is behind Omar except for the Northern Alliance,
which is made up mainly of Tajik and Uzbek minorities on the border with Central
Asia. But refugees and other Afghans in Pakistan suggest that opposition is
growing among the 40 percent Pashtun plurality that is the Taliban's base. This could complicate the Taliban military strategy -- or at least reduce it
to hiding out in remote caves. Some Kandahar residents have expressed displeasure, for instance, hat Taliban
forces have moved equipment and troops into residential areas of the city, an
aid worker said after crossing into Pakistan. "I saw women and children coming
into the streets asking the Taliban not to stay too long in one neighborhood in
the second district," he said. An anti-Taliban guerrilla fighter interviewed in Peshawar said many people in
Jalalabad in northeastern Afghanistan have also become disenchanted with the
Taliban movement. In that city, too, he said, residents have begun asking
Taliban militia units to move out of their neighborhoods to avoid drawing U.S.
airstrikes. Arabs in the Taliban military have drawn particular opposition, he said, even
though they make an effort to stay away from the city center except to buy fruit
and vegetables in the markets. But in the end, he added, they probably will be
the most determined to continue resisting U.S. or allied Afghan forces "because
they have no other option." Correspondents John Pomfret in Quetta and Pamela Constable in Islamabad
contributed to this report.
THE END
==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bUrHhl.bVKZIr Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: [email protected] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
