15 - 21 November 2001
Issue No.560
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 15 - 21 November 2001 Issue No.560 |
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Taking cover: as the Northern Alliance launch heavy strikes on Taliban positions, civilians must fend for themselves (photo: AFP)
Calling Bin Laden's bluff
With Kabul in Northern Alliance hands, the Taliban looks more vulnerable than ever. But what do they have in store? Galal Nassar assesses the military situation
The war in Afghanistan has taken a new twist with opposition Northern Alliance (NA) forces seizing key towns from Taliban control, among them the strategic cities of Kabul and Mazar-i Sharif. The elusive Osama Bin Laden, not uncharacteristically, killed the incipient joy by telling the Pakistani newspaper Dawn that he has chemical and nuclear arms and would not hesitate to use them in the case that the US used similar weapons in its attacks on Afghanistan.
The capture of the northern city of Mazar-i Sharif on Sunday boosted the fortunes of US forces and the Northern Alliance, spurring the advance of opposition forces towards Kabul, which fell to the NA on Tuesday. The takeover took place despite official statements by US President George W Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell asking the NA to hold back from advancing on Kabul. "We will encourage our friends [in the Northern Alliance] to head south, but not into the city of Kabul itself," Bush said. The warning was repeated by Powell: "Kabul should be an open city after the Taliban are ousted."
The sudden fall of Kabul soon after Taliban fighters evacuated the capital, however, has led some experts to speculate that US statements were simply an attempt to cover the NA's advance. Justifying their earlier request to the NA not to take over Kabul, US officials said that the chequered political and ethnic background of the NA is unlikely to produce a viable government, at least not one the United States could trust to look after its extensive interests in Central Asia and the region of the Caspian Sea.
NA commander Abdurrashid Dostum, who ruled Mazar-i Sharif before it fell to the Taliban three years ago, said that the strategic city was seized fast, with the Taliban losing 90 combatants in action. Mohamed Mohaqiq, another NA commander, said that between 7,000 and 8,000 NA forces took part in the attack. Another NA leader mentioned that US Special Forces had guided NA troops during their march on Mazar-i Sharif, where some 200,000 inhabitants fled the city ahead of the NA ground offensive.
Military analysts, recalling the role Mazar-i Sharif played in bringing about the collapse of the communist regime of President Najibullah in 1992, believe that its capture, followed by Kabul a few days later, marks the beginning of the end for the Taliban. Others see military acumen in the Taliban's abandoning a city whose inhabitants are so markedly different, in language and ethnic origin, from their own, mostly Pashtun, fighters. The Taliban may be saving its energy to fight another day. By tactically withdrawing from Mazar-i Sharif and other northern provinces, the Taliban will be in a better position to defend the predominantly Pashtun southern areas, and may be paving the ground for the formation of a Pashtun state.
Over the past four years, Mazar-i Sharif has changed hands four times among various warring Afghan parties and was a scene of some of the most pitched battles in the Afghan civil war. The city escaped damage for most of the 22-year Afghan conflict, but its luck ran out after the Taliban retook the city in 1998.
When the NA regained full control of the city this week, it offered the United States a position from which to supply the opposition forces with much-needed supplies. Tanks, artillery and ammunition can now reach the poorly-armed NA troops via Uzbekistan, whose border is only 100 kilometres away. The NA would thus be in a position to threaten and isolate all Taliban positions along the northern front of Afghanistan.
Another bonus for the Taliban's adversaries is that, unlike the rest of Afghanistan, Mazar-i Sharif is situated in low lying areas, where the roads do not freeze in winter. The Soviets made ample use of this advantage when they invaded the country in December 1979. They fortified Mazar-i Sharif and used it as a main centre for supply routes. No battle ever took place in Mazar-i Sharif during the entire period of Soviet occupation in the 1980s.
Looking south: Northern Alliance fighters are looking for a full sweep after taking the capital on Tuesday. (top to bottom) An Afghan soldier keeps watch over Taliban positions in northern Afghanistan; the carnage of Taliban jet fighters north of Kabul; a US jet darts in front of the sun while returning from a sortie in Afghanistan
(photos: Reuters)
The United States will have to use Mazar-i Sharif and the northern provinces in the same way the Soviets did, as a base with easy access to Uzbekistan. There, it could park its HH-60 Black Hawk, MH-53 Jim Pave Low, and AH-64 Apache helicopters. The US B-52H Startofortress, F-14D Tomcat, and F/A- 18D Hornet planes, currently used to bombard Taliban's frontlines, will probably continue to be launched from elsewhere.
Despite Kabul's sudden fall on Tuesday, military experts believe the battle is not over, and that the Taliban's total defeat will not be an easy task. Thousands of volunteers from Pakistan, mostly from the Pashtun tribes inhabiting Northern Pakistan, as well as southern Pashtuns, have joined the ranks of the Taliban. With this reinforcement, the Taliban has set up several ambushes on mountain passes and has been busy planting thousands of anti-tank and anti- personnel land mines. Older mines remaining from the Soviet occupation and from the civil war between the Taliban and its adversaries are also still in place.
Taliban troops have the advantage of being a mobile force. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, it took them only a few days to take control of the city. They used the simple device of transporting thousands of soldiers on the back of light trucks. Today, the Taliban use similar trucks to move anti-aircraft guns and rocket launchers in a game of fire-and-run with US bombers. The Taliban also have stockpiles of weapons in the caves and tunnels around Kabul, a maze believed to extend for hundreds of miles.
Afghanistan's terrain is perfectly suited for guerrilla warfare and this advantage has been boosted by a number of man-made caves and tunnels. The oldest of these are the Karz irrigation canals, which were in place even at the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of Afghanistan some 2,300 years ago. These tunnels provide perfect hiding places. Afghans took cover there when Ghengis Khan's troops stormed the area in 1221 and the same system of tunnels and crevices were particularly handy when the mujahedin waged their resistance against Soviet invaders. The mujahedin enlarged the Karz network, adding new tunnels and storage places for weapons, food, and other supplies.
The mujahedin built many more underground bunkers in the 1980s, some running thousands of feet inside the mountains. Some are said to be two stories high, with enough room to park 18 cars. Two large bunkers are situated close to Jalalabad, but the largest is somewhere north of Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold. This is where Osama Bin Laden and his aides dug a tunnel in a mountainside location and are believed to be hiding. The tunnel, furnished and carpeted, has generator-powered air conditioning.
These impenetrable shelters would make the job of any invading force particularly hard. The Karz tunnel network and an assortment of modest bunkers provide combatants with resting places, storage space for their weapons and food, as well as shelter from enemy fire. From there, they can engage in their favourite method of warfare: hit-and-run attacks. A former colonel with the Afghan Communist army once said: "When you reach them, you do not find anyone. But as you leave, they come out and attack you from behind."
Larger bunkers provide combatants with storage space for supplies and weapons for long- term use, as well as shelter from heavy air raids. The Zahor shelter in Paktia province, for example, sustained 57 days of continuous Soviet shelling in 1986, before the mujahedin finally evacuated it. When the Soviets entered the shelter, they were flabbergasted. Inside, they found a mosque, with a well-decorated brick façade; a hospital; with its own X-ray machine; a well- stocked library with books in English and Farsi; a hostel, complete with comfortable furniture and expensive carpeting; and a T-34 tank. The bunker contained 41 spacious caves and tunnels that ran the length of six football fields.
When Bin Laden took over the Zahor bunker, he enlarged it further. This is the same bunker the Americans bombarded in retaliation for attacks on two US embassies in Africa in 1998. Caves and tunnels, however, are hard to defend from the inside. They are good for hiding and storage, but you have to step out of them to confront the enemy. This is why the Taliban has been careful to plant an array of land mines to protect the caves and tunnels from enemy attacks.
Another weapon that the Taliban forces and Al-Qa'ida outfit may resort to is, unsurprisingly, suicide squads. According to military sources, the Taliban forces in Afghanistan are training suicide squads to confront NA ground attacks. These squads, made up of Afghan and Arab fighters, have orders to engage the enemy in a ground offensive and have been deployed in areas under Taliban control. They are armed with Russian AK-83 and German H- K assault rifles and their members carry distinguishing insignia on their shoulders. Their vehicles also have special marks.
The commander of the suicide squads, sources say, is a Moroccan closely linked with the Palestinian group Fatah. Dozens of Afghan Arabs have been trained in Osama Bin Laden's camps in Jalalabad, Khowst, and the surroundings of Kandahar on how to use booby-trapped vehicles and single-engine gliders in suicide missions, the aim being to inflict maximum damage on US and UK special forces once the ground offensive gets underway.
The formation of suicide squads is a turning point in the Afghanistan conflict. Never before, in 23 years of fighting against the Soviets and of civil war, have suicide squads been used in combat. But, in these desperate times for the Taliban, Afghan Arab suicide squads are looked upon with great deference. Members of these squads can drive into fortified Taliban locations in cars with curtained or tinted windows without even bothering to slow down. Normally dressed in black, these would-be martyrs have slogans announcing their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice imprinted on their tunics.
A theological debate has arisen over the use of Afghan Arab suicide squads. Hanafi and Hanbali scholars disagree on the advisability of the suicide missions. Followers of Hanbali doctrine sanction suicide operations, but only as a last resort. Followers of the Hanafi doctrine, mostly Pashtuns, oppose such missions on the grounds that Islam prohibits suicide. Afghan Arab commanders, however, are convinced that Taliban scholars will change their minds as ground operations intensify.
In an interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Bin Laden claimed that he has nuclear and chemical arms and would not mind using them in retaliation to possible US nuclear strikes against Afghanistan. For several military analysts, this statement was both irresponsible and politically foolish. It gives the Americans an excuse to use maximum force to destroy Bin Laden and his outfit under the pretext that they have acquired weapons of mass destruction. While it is unlikely that Bin Laden has nuclear weapons, he may be able to wield chemical and biological ones.
Even if Al-Qa'ida was proved to have nuclear power, it does not have access to the appropriate means delivery, such as transcontinental ballistic missiles and long-range strategic bombers. Most likely, Bin Laden was playing on US fears of chemical and biological attacks, flaunting his own notoriety to confound the enemy.
The timing was perfect. Only a few days before Bin Laden made these remarks, Mohamed Al- Barad'i, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said that "fears are no longer confined to the possibility of governments turning nuclear material into secret weapons programmes, but of individuals and organisations doing so ... There is concern over reports that extremist groups have tried to obtain nuclear material."
What Al-Barad'i had in mind was nuclear material that may have ended up in the wrong hands over the past few years. Since 1993, there have been 175 known cases of smuggling of nuclear material and 201 cases of smuggling of radioactive material commonly used for medical and industrial purposes. Only 19 cases are actually linked to plutonium or enriched uranium, the material needed to make nuclear bombs. The IAEA believes that the quantities in question are sufficient to manufacture a nuclear bomb.
The worst fear of the American public is that Bin Laden may have put together what scientists refer to as a "dirty bomb" -- one that combines conventional explosives with radioactive material of the grade used in hospitals and industry. Such a bomb can spread radioactive material in a limited area, causing enough panic to evacuate an entire city.
Bin Laden's threat to use nuclear weapons has been challenged by Pakistan, a country with intimate insight into Bin Laden's affairs. Refuting Bin Laden's claims, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said: "I cannot imagine that the Al-Qa'ida leader had the capability to either produce or store nuclear weapons. Sophisticated engineering is needed to produce nuclear weapons, to keep them stable and to deliver them. I cannot believe that Bin Laden had such expertise at his disposal."
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