U.S. hopes to avoid invasion by courting Afghan opposition

09/26/2001

By JIM LANDERS / The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is courting warring tribes and regional allies to break the defiance of the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan who harbor Osama bin Laden, focusing on an "Afghan solution" rather than a U.S. invasion force, U.S. officials and private analysts say.

Afghans fed up with the Taliban could either force the militant Islamic regime from power or compel them to surrender Mr. bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terror network, as President Bush has demanded, these sources say, without the regional turmoil of a U.S. invasion.

Part of the effort involves recruiting exiled and retired leaders who either left Afghanistan or quit fighting as the Taliban took control of the country in the last seven years. It also involves the exiled king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, who left the country for Rome in 1973.

The most important element in the effort, however, may be Pakistan's military intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence or ISI, which has armed the Taliban and whose commanding general was confronted by the Bush administration this month and told to choose sides.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said administration strategists must approach the complex situation in Afghanistan like a game of billiards.

"The balls careen around for a while. You don't know what'll do it. But the end result, we would hope, would be a situation where the al- Qaeda is heaved out. And the people in Taliban who think that it's good for them and good for the world to harbor terrorists and to foment and encourage and facilitate that kind of activity, lose, and lose seriously."

Mr. Rumsfeld refused to discuss U.S. military plans for Afghanistan.

Afghan fighters with the Northern Alliance in the far northeast of the country said they would welcome U.S. air strikes to help with their land war against the Taliban.

But putting a U.S. army into Afghanistan could cause more harm than good in the region, some analysts said.

"If America decides it really has to get rid of the Taliban – and if they go on refusing to hand over bin Laden, the U.S. will have no choice – than using the Afghan opposition is the only way," said Anatole Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

A U.S. diplomatic offensive has isolated the Taliban from their few ties to the outside world. From Rome, the exiled king has called for convening Afghanistan's tribal leaders to form a national government opposed to the Taliban.

Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has pledged his support, as has the ISI's commander, Gen. Mehmood Ahmed, who was in Washington when the Sept. 11 terror attacks took place.

Analysts caution that Afghanistan is a failed state, with no effective central government, masses of starving refugees and intense rivalries among regional warlords.

Toppling the Taliban in these circumstances would impose a huge burden on the international community and would require "a government of occupation," said Martha Brill Olcott, a political science professor at Colgate University who is also with the Carnegie Endowment.

"The Taliban are not credible as a government. But there's nothing there to replace them," she said.

In these circumstances, some argue, the U.S. goal should be to break up the al-Qaeda network rather than to smash the Taliban. And it appears that is the direction the administration is headed.

"[U.S. policy] is not designed to replace one regime with another regime," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Tuesday.

"I don't think there's an Afghan solution, where these opposition people would all form an alternative government to the Taliban," said former Lufkin legislator Charles Wilson, now a lobbyist in Washington for the Pakistan government.

"But I think they would be enormously helpful in forming an immense distraction for the Taliban. If they keep trying to protect bin Laden, we should help these other people as much as we can."

Mr. Wilson, who worked to provide U.S. military aid to the Afghan resistance fighters during their war with the Soviet Union, said the ISI "is totally on board."

Mr. Wilson said the U.S. military should avoid involvement in an Afghan war.