4 - 10 October 2001
Issue No.554
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 4 - 10 October 2001 Issue No.554 |
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Time for SAS?
The hostile terrain of Afghanistan has confounded superpowers galore. Jasper Thornton investigates the military options available to the powers and discovers that special forces are likely to play a big role
It is January. A chilly wind from the steppe is salting the hard brown earth with frost, chasing the last pockets of warmth from the most sheltered defile. The sky is grey as ashes. William Brydon, soldier with the British forces in Afghanistan, is making way to Jellalabad from Kabul. He is utterly alone. Beneath him, his horse bows in weariness, its sweat giving off that sour urine stink that accompanies total exhaustion.
A British Gurkha platoon in Oman performing military exercises; they are among the estimated 23,000 British forces in the Gulf
(photo: AP)
That was in 1842. Brydon, a military doctor, was one of 14,000 British troops who left Kabul for Jellalabad in India, during the first Afghan War. Afghan guerrillas ambushed them in the passes. All but Brydon were slaughtered, the corpses of the rest left to freeze in the open. Military experts feel an army invading Afghanistan could suffer the same today.
"That is war in Afghanistan. That is what happens. Afghanistan is a terrible place to fight. The Americans know that; that's why they haven't made their move yet." A European diplomat, who preferred to stay unnamed, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Major-General Mohamed Kadry Said, a military adviser to Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, agreed. "Maybe if I were the US, I would leave it. We in Egypt did: when one of Bin Laden's men bombed the Egyptian Embassy in Pakistan, we let it go. But the US can't: public opinion is pushing them to act. They have two choices. They can invade in force, and try and hound Bin Laden out, or they can use airstrikes as a show and distraction, then send in special forces to support the Northern Alliance against the Taliban, find Bin Laden and engage him from undercover bases. It's a classical scenario, and an either/or situation."
Britain's special forces regiment, the Special Air Service (SAS), is already in Afghanistan. Michael Evans of the Times of London, writes that a special SAS unit has been training in Pakistan's mountains for the past five years. Evans also says the SAS men have built a potent rapport with their Pakistani counterparts. This could be important. Said told the Weekly that this coming conflict differs hugely from the Gulf War. "There, the US could pick from friendly countries. But there are none around Afghanistan. China and Russia, for example, may encourage the US to come to Afghanistan, but they want to see the US involved in a sapping conflict. Certainly they won't give active help like the US got from moderate Arab regimes for its invasion of Iraq." Forces going in to Afghanistan will need all the help they can get.
A seasoned observer of special forces operations told the Weekly how the SAS in Afghanistan will operate. "US special forces rely on high technology. They will use electronics to try and find Bin Laden," she said. The British take a different approach. "The SAS does "hearts and minds." They try and win over the opponents of their enemy. They did this in Malaya, building long-term relationships with the heads of local tribes, offering medical help, engineering advice and building work. In Dhofar in Oman, they started a tradition of enlisting locals to help them navigate the terrain. Every unit also had a qualified vet and an Arabic speaker. The vet will be useful in Afghanistan -- livestock illness will be the blight of the locals. Treating the tribesmen's herds will be a way to win them over." In Oman, the SAS raised and trained local units of between 50 and 100 called firqat. After a year, 1600 soldiers so trained, helped the Sultan stifle his insurgents.
"Once in Afghanistan," she went on, "the SAS will use lasers to 'highlight' targets that cannot be picked out from the air (think tents, there one day, gone the next). Then the bombers will fly in and do the rest. They will also work with the opposition forces in the North to pressure the Taliban, and engage Bin Laden if they find him. But it will be hard against a will o'the wisp like Bin Laden, who also knows how to win hearts and minds. It could be an interesting battle."
Said told the Weekly that the Special Forces route makes sense. "The political dimension will be inseparable from the military in this conflict. The powers will want to avoid big casualties. They will also need to be sensitive to the cultural and religious sensitivities of the region if they want to keep coalition partners in. The smaller profile their military acts the better." The SAS was founded by British soldiers operating in the deserts of Egypt in the 1940s. Since its first deployment at Kabrit in the Suez Canal zone during World War II, the SAS has operated in Oman, Yemen, Malaysia, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, and Iraq.
Now that the immediate fury over 11 September has passed, the realities of action in Afghanistan have become plain. There are scant military options; none is palatable. Special forces operations seem the likeliest choice, with the smallest risk. But if the soldiers of the powers are not to suffer like the Soviet Spetsnaz, or the British Raj, their intelligence and planning will "need to be of the highest quality," cautions Said. A colonel who saw the British leave Kabul in that fateful war in the 19th Century remarked: "Not a soul will reach here from Kabul, except one man, who will come to tell us the rest are destroyed." That is the danger of warring in Afghanistan.
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