Attack on Taliban wouldn't be easy

U.S. could lose lives in mountainous guerrilla war in Afghanistan

By GREGORY KATZ
The Dallas Morning News

LONDON – If the United States led an attack on Afghanistan to punish the Taliban fundamentalists for sheltering Osama bin Laden, the world's best-equipped fighting power would find an enemy armed with some rusty Soviet gear and a few U.S.-made Stinger missiles.

The Taliban, with an estimated 100 aging tanks, could hardly be less equipped for a major, conventional military conflict, but the group's roughly 45,000 soldiers would have the formidable advantage of being able to fight a guerrilla war on their own turf.

Experts believe the Taliban forces would not risk major confrontations with advancing armies but would choose to mix in with the civilian population and launch ambushes designed to capitalize on their knowledge of Afghanistan's forbidding hilly terrain.

In an unconventional war in hostile country – and one at high altitudes that hinder the effectiveness of crucial helicopter flights – U.S. forces could easily suffer a significant number of casualties, said Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistani author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil & Fundamentalism in Central Asia.

"The Taliban are very weak in conventional terms," he said. "They have very little firepower, and what they have is ancient; it's 40-year-old Soviet material. They have Scud missiles and Stingers, but they're probably out of date. They have about 10 fighter aircraft, but it's '60s vintage and poses no threat to the U.S. It's not the danger of their firepower, it's the danger of sniping guerrilla war, a war of attrition."

Mr. Rashid said it is not clear whether the American public is willing to accept a long war with numerous body bags for U.S. and allied soldiers killed in remote Afghan mountains and valleys.

'A fighting race'

"It's a fighting race. They've fought for centuries," he said. "It's a militarized culture; using weapons is part of the culture and tradition of manhood. And 23 years of civil war has intensified this."

The Taliban, mainly young militants from refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan, came to power in 1996 with a remarkable cross-country march that placed much of Afghanistan under its control.

The Taliban was initially credited with bringing a measure of stability to Afghanistan after years of war, but its leaders have appeared to be losing popularity as the economy has gone from bad to worse.

They have also drawn condemnation from dozens of countries for their harsh suppression of women's rights and their intolerant view of non-Muslims.

Nonetheless, the opposition within Afghanistan is weak, and military analysts believe that diverse tribal leaders who have broken ranks with the Taliban would rally behind the fundamentalists if an external enemy attacked.

Modern history is littered with the broken dreams of imperial armies that have tried to crush the Afghans – both the Russians and British came to grief on earlier military expeditions there – and Taliban fighters would try to keep this heritage alive, he said.

Limited military

In addition, the Taliban has about 20 operational surface-to-air missile launchers that might provide some initial protection against air assaults, said Charles Heyman, editor of Jane's World Armies.

"They have no real deterrent, nothing of real value," he said. "U.S. aircraft are going to range free across the skies. Their Stingers could be useful, but equipment for the suppression of enemy aircraft has moved on in the last 10 years, and the Stingers are easily decoyed."

He said the Taliban has no tangible military assets but does possess a notable skill at fighting from mountain retreats.

"That's worth a million dollars," he said. "They have a long tradition of causing Western armies tremendous problems when they are armed with rifles and sitting in the hills and fighting as classic guerrillas. I think that's a relevant skill because I believe there are going to be ground forces [involved] at some point."

He said that a preliminary U.S. airstrike is likely within days and that the attack would trigger a "public relations war" in which the Taliban would do everything possible to produce, or fabricate, evidence that women and children had been killed in the raids.

"The Pentagon will try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum," he said. "They don't want to kill people, and they know how to fight a P.R. war."

Minor targets

Much of Afghanistan's road and electricity infrastructure has already been severely degraded by decades of heavy warfare and is not seen as a worthwhile target for U.S. bombers.

The fact that the country is already so poor, and afflicted with so much human suffering, means there will be a tremendous wave of revulsion in the Muslim world if the United States and its allies attack, said Iftikhar Malik, a Middle East specialist at Oxford University.

"They have no radars, no technology, their troops are poorly trained," he said. "It's a medieval country. If we bombed, there would be a huge human catastrophe. In Kabul half the people are disabled. They are victims of the mines left from the Soviet war. Calorie intake is one-quarter that recommended by the World Health Organization. So their principal asset is the sympathy that will spread across the Muslim world when people see more destruction there."

Arsenal of light weapons

But Dr. Ranstorp said the group's main asset is its relationship with Mr. bin Laden and the terrorists aligned with him.

He said the Taliban has placed 20,000 of its troops on the border with Pakistan as an indication that one of its goals is to destabilize the Pakistani regime, which is cooperating with the Bush administration. Dr. Ranstorp predicted that support for the Taliban would grow exponentially if Western forces attacked Afghanistan.

"The tribes of various factions are battle-hardened, they have an intimate knowledge of the terrain, and they can hide within the civilian populace. So Western ground troops could be sucked into a swamp."