Helmand offensive
As thousands of US Marines leading a Nato and Afghan offensive on Marjah in Helmand province prepare their assault, the 2,000 or so Taliban fighters in the region seem to be digging in for what promises to be a very bloody battle. Marjah is considered the centre of the area controlled by the Taliban, a place from were it is also reported the drugs trade helps fill Taliban coffers. The coalition forces have been beating the drum loudly to warn of the impending attack, in a transparent attempt to get some if not all the Taliban to lay down their arms even before a single shot is fired. But on the evidence of the reports from the area, this has had if anything the opposite effect, with the Taliban vowing to resist till death. The only impact of the loud drum beating has been a mass exodus of the 80,000 residents of Marjah to escape the onslaught. Considering that reports speak of this being the biggest military attack mounted by the US since the Vietnam war, and the most extensive air bombardment planned since the Gulf war, not to mention being the first practical manifestation of President Obama’s new strategy of surge and then talk, it is not unreasonable to surmise that if the Taliban mean what they are saying, that they intend to fight a fixed positional battle, they are likely to be overwhelmed by their adversaries’ vastly superior firepower. That could mean that the Taliban’s ‘defiance’ is merely a feint, and that when the coalition forces actually move in, the guerrillas could just melt away. Therefore the claims of the commander of the foreign forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, that the major offensive will send a ‘strong signal’, clear the south of the country, and provide the space for a change in governance in the Taliban stronghold, may prove ephemeral. The Taliban insurgency is by now sufficiently battle hardened and skilled to avoid a ruinous direct confrontation in the face of overwhelming force, and decide to move away to preserve themselves, live to fight another day, and wait for the din of the foreign forces’ ‘arrival’ to subside before they start nipping away at the heels of the invading force once again.
The Afghan campaign suffers from many disadvantages. Amongst these could be counted the uncertainty surrounding Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s offer of reconciliation to his Taliban ‘brothers’, which the Taliban have rejected out of hand despite Karzai’s travelling to Saudi Arabia to seek the Kingdom’s help in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. Whereas the thrust of Karzai’s offer is aimed at the Taliban leadership, including centrally Mullah Omar, the US and Nato forces seem wedded to a somewhat less ambitious endeavour. At the Nato security conference in Munich, Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy, was at pains to clarify that his country was not in “direct contact” with the Taliban (i.e. its leadership). The Americans and Nato are talking about reconciling lower level cadres of the Taliban, who they believe are less ideologically motivated than the leadership, and who might accept jobs, security and rehabilitation in return for coming in from the cold. Frankly, the efficacy of this approach has still to be demonstrated in practice.
The case of an Afghan police commander under arrest for allegedly helping plant IEDs points to the other uncertainty: the loyalty and reliability of the Afghan army and police the coalition has been trying to conjure up for many years, without any noteworthy success, dogged as the whole enterprise is by fears of the Taliban or their sympathisers’ infiltration of these forces. This ‘fifth column’ may prove even more deadly than the guerrillas the US and Nato face in the field, since they could bide their time until an opportunity presents itself to damage the allied effort significantly. Such instances are no figment of the imagination, since actual and perceived betrayals of this kind are the stuff of the flawed Afghan forces’ building effort almost from day one.
The jury is still out on the success or failure of the Helmand offensive, but it has yet to provide a convincing exposition of strategy that can either defeat militarily, or weaken the Taliban sufficiently to force them to sue for peace. All eyes will be on Marjah over the coming days.
Friday, April 22, 2011
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