A couple of phrases give us useful pointers to the moral and
political intricacies of retribution. The Pentagon is talking about
establishing "killing boxes" around Kabul, where U.S. helicopter gunships
can fire at will. The Pentagon's assumption is that such "killing boxes"
contain only Taliban troops, fair game for everything the gunships can throw
at them.
Thus we see the return of an old friend from counterinsurgency
in an earlier time, when "free-fire zones" meant that any Vietnamese peasant
could be swiftly identified as Viet Cong, and thus a legitimate target.
Motorized transportation in Afghanistan mostly consists of old
trucks. My brother Patrick, reporting from the Panjshir Valley for the
London Independent, told me on his satellite phone Friday morning that he
was being driven around in a truck with bullet holes in the windscreen that
the Northern Alliance had captured not long before from the Taliban.
From the air an old truck looks like an old truck, whether the
fellow driving it is a Taliban warrior or a farmer. In the 50 odd miles
between Northern Alliance positions and Kabul are nearly a million
villagers. Is this the kind of terrain to be winning hearts and minds with
"killing boxes"?
We're now falling into the daily news rhythm of "more intense
bombing around Kabul." I hear it each morning on CNN. It's not so long since
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was talking about the paucity of
worthwhile targets in Afghanistan.
So all we can conclude is that the U.S. military strategy is now
that of trying to eliminate a militia and its leaders in difficult terrain
by bombs, missiles and gunships. One Pentagon spokesman on Oct. 16 said that
the AC-130 Specter gunships were selected to add an element of terror to the
attack as well. "If you're on the ground," he continued, "and get hit with a
bomb from a B-52, it's over, but if you're there and hear an AC-130 coming
with its Gatling gun going, the experience can be even more frightening."
Now these gunships are over Kabul. How can the Pentagon possibly
argue that the only people these gunships will terrify are the Taliban and
al-Qaeda? The usual rule is that bombing unites those in the receiving end
in fear and dislike of the people doing the bombing. For the same reason it
also consolidates the political control of those in power, whether Aideed or
Saddam Hussein.
The Pentagon also lets it be known that there are now U.S.
forces "on the ground" in Afghanistan, presumably combing the mountains for
bin Laden. The self-satisfied and self-indulgent Rumsfeld had rich sport the
other day, playing to the press gallery by belittling the view of the chief
of Britain's Imperial General Staff that the campaign to run down bin Laden
and his Taliban allies would last into next year.
Perhaps the Special Forces will run bin Laden to ground, but it
is worth remembering that Afghanistan is twice the size of France. How many
troops does it take to comb the Hindukush? How long would it take,
especially considering winter is only a week or two away in Afghanistan?
Remember the efforts via gunships and Special Forces to wipe out the warlord
Mohammed Aideed in Mogadishu, Somalia, which came to such grief in early
Clinton-time?
This brings us to the moral calculus of bombing. How can one
categorize the current bombing as anything other than an assault on innocent
civilians, for whose well-being President Bush has more than once expressed
great concern? Reputable relief organizations have stated repeatedly that up
to 7 million Afghans, many of them children, are on the edge of starvation.
The famous aerial food drops are the purest tokenism. The only way food can
be brought is by road, and amid the bombing, these convoys have largely been
suspended.
It seems reasonable to assume that about 500 Afghan civilians
have been killed by the bombs, but even if the Pentagon was right in
disputing that number, it is impossible to occlude the simple truth that the
bombing will most certainly exact huge casualties among malnourished
refugees beset by winter. "Collateral damage" is assured.
The second telltale phrase: "Moderate elements in the Taliban."
That was the political message that came out of Secretary of State Colin
Powell's recent visit to Pakistan, in which the Pakistanis insisted that any
sort of takeover in Kabul by the Uzbeks and Tadzhiks in the Northern
Alliance was unacceptable. Hence the sudden discovery that there are
"moderate elements in the Taliban" that can be recruited to a new coalition
government.
As a phrase, "moderate elements in the Taliban" may sound
comical, as though New Labor's Tony Blair suddenly started talking about the
"New Taliban." But at least it suggests a political strategy a little more
refined than that of terrorizing Kabul with bombs and gunships in a bombing
campaign that, in terms of international treaty and obligation, is entirely
illegal, though no one seems to care about that anymore.
The appropriate strategy to extract bin Laden from Afghanistan
and to isolate Mullah Omar was always a political one, of the sort in which
the CIA is supposed to excel, with suitable backstairs intrigue and bribery,
and promises to the relative chieftains and feudal lords that, in the
future, their opium trade will not be inconvenienced by international
reproof. In other words, once Mullah Omar's body can be exposed on the
battlements of Kabul, hopefully alongside that of Osama bin Laden and his
associates, life in Afghanistan can resume its normal course.
Terrorism, however bloody, is an expression of political intent.
Effective counter-terrorism is also political in its aims and strategy, or
should be. In its current form, the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan
looks awfully like blind rage, like the giant Polyphemus in Homer's
"Odyssey," blindly hurling a rock at his assailants as they sailed away.
Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the
muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
