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After more than a month of bombings, Washington is now contemplating the second phase of the campaign in Afghanistan. Having achieved air superiority, the military must move to a strategic ground offensive. This week, STRATFOR will examine what options the United States – as well as its enemies – may pursue as part of a ground strategy in Afghanistan.
The battle between the United States and al-Qaida, with the first attacks and counterattacks over, is settling into the extended warfare most reasonable people expected it to be. The Sept. 11 attacks hurt the United States but did not cripple it. The U.S. counterattack has similarly hurt the Taliban but has not crippled it either.
Certainly, nothing that is happening in Afghanistan has eliminated the capabilities of al-Qaida inside the United States. Each side played its first card. More cards remain to be played.
There have never been two more dissimilar fighting forces than those of the United States and al-Qaida. Both have global capabilities, but these capabilities are utterly different. Al-Qaida’s strength derives from pure stealth. It is a special operations force designed to survive by disappearing into the surrounding society and then, at the time and place of its choosing, strike suddenly. U.S. strength derives from its overwhelming technology, which allows America to strike where and when it wants. Both sides enjoy extraordinary freedom of action – for very different reasons – yet neither appears able to match its armed forces to its political aims.
Al-Qaida’s goal is to see the creation of a pan-Islamic movement to establish a transnational Islamic state based on its reading of Islamic law. The purpose of this state would be to insulate the Islamic world from the economic, political and cultural power of the non-Islamic world, and by logical extension, serve as the foundation for an expanded Islamic world.
Al-Qaida must have at least one and preferably more Islamic states under its control in order to succeed. Afghanistan, for both geographic and political reasons, is unsuitable for the group’s long-term plans. Al-Qaida would dearly like to have the resources of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia behind it, but without becoming a prisoner of those regimes in the process. To achieve its goal, the group needs to generate a political upheaval in several Islamic countries in which its supporters would supplant existing political elites. If this were to happen, then greater things would be possible.
The attack on the United States was not an end in itself but a means toward this end. Al-Qaida must first persuade the Islamic public that its vision is not sheer lunacy but a practical political-military possibility. The Sept. 11 attacks were designed to convince that public that America is not invincible.
Just as important, al-Qaida must convince the Islamic public that America is not only highly vulnerable but also the enemy of Islam. To prove its point, the organization would like to see Washington make war on multiple Islamic countries simultaneously. America must also be proven to be heedless of innocent Islamic lives. Although the current air campaign in Afghanistan is not as broad as al-Qaida would like, it does serve part of its purpose.
Al-Qaida at this point has two warfighting objectives. The first is simply for it and its Taliban allies to survive, as this will demonstrate to the Islamic masses that U.S. power is merely illusory. It will also increase frustration among Americans, hopefully causing the government to overreach. This is the second warfighting objective: to draw Washington into war in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Islamic world so Islamic countries are forced to stand against it and weaken U.S. power through endless conflict.
As part of its objectives, al-Qaida must first continue to strike – or be perceived as striking – inside the United States, weakening the country as much as possible and goading the government into irrational countermoves. Second, it must maintain its base of operations inside Afghanistan to draw the United States into conducting piecemeal operations, cause casualties and demonstrate the limits of U.S. power.
Washington’s strategic goal has been set by al-Qaida. First, and most important, it wants to stop any further attacks by al-Qaida on U.S. soil. Second, it wants to demonstrate that the consequences of attacking the United States are catastrophic so that this may serve as a deterrent to any other groups that might be contemplating such actions.
The United States must penetrate al-Qaida’s task forces operating within its borders. This is obviously difficult because these forces have had several years in which to disappear into American society. Therefore, it is necessary to cut their financial support and their command and control system.
Those elements lead out of the United States and overseas, not only to European countries but – more important – into Islamic countries whose interest in being seen as helping the United States is limited, but whose interest in seeing al-Qaida destroyed might well be substantial.
Washington must then build a coalition of European and Islamic countries to help it root out al-Qaida cells inside U.S. borders. It needs to build coalitions not so much to fight the war in Afghanistan as to get at al-Qaida’s support systems throughout the world. Such a coalition, done covertly and carefully, could help the United States in its first mission. But the same coalition also limits America’s ability to carry out the second mission: punitive action against Afghanistan.
Important segments of most Islamic countries want to see al-Qaida crushed. They are prepared to cooperate covertly, but overtly, their position is more ambiguous. They fear the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Specifically, they worry the air campaign will generate the kind of anti-American groundswell among the Islamic masses that al-Qaida is hoping for. They are also afraid their regimes will be destabilized if they are seen as supporting U.S. intelligence in its war on al-Qaida.
For instance, the United States finds itself in a terrific quandary with Pakistan. It cannot win in Afghanistan without Pakistan, and at the very least, it must have Pakistan’s cooperation in sealing the Afghan border so the Taliban is not resupplied. But the fact is the Taliban government is a creature of Pakistan, and Pakistan does not want it toppled.
Islamabad can perhaps accept the fall of Taliban leader Mullah Omar and the capture of Osama bin Laden, but it cannot accept the collapse of the Taliban altogether. And it certainly cannot tolerate the Northern Alliance, which they see as Russian puppets, retaking Kabul.
That makes formulating warfighting strategy in Afghanistan extraordinarily difficult. Washington will need many months to work out suitable political arrangements before it can confront the issue of actually toppling the Taliban militarily. In the meantime, there is a fundamental issue of whether the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan would mean the end of al-Qaida’s attacks on the United States. There is no reason to believe this to be the case. Quite the contrary, al-Qaida is constructed to withstand a calamity in Afghanistan.
The U.S. warfighting goals are therefore not fully synchronized. The operation in Afghanistan will not yield victory in the American theater of operations. In fact, the greater the pressure in Afghanistan, the more restive the Islamic world becomes. And the more restive the Islamic world becomes, the less likely the coalition for covert operations is to survive. There is, at the root of American strategy, a logical inconsistency that must either be reconciled or overcome by sheer power.
Al-Qaida from the beginning placed the United States on the defensive. The United States has chosen to launch its first significant counteroffensive from the air in Afghanistan. This is highly predictable warfighting on the part of the United States. It is the way it fights wars. Now the question is, after the airpower card is played, what will the next one be?
That is the point we have reached in the conflict. Al-Qaida struck first. If it isn’t responsible for the anthrax attacks, it is extraordinarily lucky to have a faceless, nameless ally helping it along. As with all al-Qaida attacks, the anthrax attacks continue to challenge the United States both psychologically and in terms of infrastructure.
If the U.S. Postal Service were forced to close or slow its operations, the effect on the economy would be enormous. Perhaps nothing else will come next, or perhaps another calamity will hit. Only al-Qaida knows, and that is its advantage.
America has achieved air superiority. It is bombing the Taliban in the north. But whether the Northern Alliance can take Kabul and whether the United States, mindful of Pakistan, wants it to, are both unclear. Washington now has to move to a strategic ground offensive in Afghanistan, and beginning no later than spring is essential. What is still not known is where the offensive will take place, or what options the United States – or its enemies – will pursue as part of a ground strategy in Afghanistan.
