From: Miroslav Antic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Taliban Strategy: Prolong Conflict [WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK] HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Taliban Strategy: Prolong Conflict 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. C 2001 The Washington Post Company _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
