#2
Moscow Times
October 11, 2001
Sowing Seeds of Acrimony?
By Pavel Felgenhauer
In a pattern almost the same as in other armed conflicts of the last
decade, the United States and Britain attacked Afghanistan with warplanes,
strategic bombers and cruise missiles. But the number of sorties was not
impressive -- 40 on the first day, 20 on the second, as well as several
dozen cruise missiles -- in comparison with the thousands of daily sorties
carried out during the Gulf War in 1991 or hundreds of NATO daily sorties
against Yugoslavia in 1999.
However, the Pentagon claims that the strikes virtually destroyed the
Taliban's radar capability, air force and air defense system and that the
West has gained air superiority. A great military achievement, but only if
one forgets that the Taliban did not have any air defense system to begin
with. There were only a couple of civilian air-traffic control radars that
were donated to Afghanistan by international organizations to facilitate
the delivery of humanitarian aid by airlift.
The airports have been repeatedly hit, the radars have been destroyed and
no food, medicine or clothing can be airlifted directly into Afghanistan.
In the approaching winter, many roads will be closed and a large number of
Afghans may perish (international charities say it may be in the hundreds
of thousands).
After destroying the Taliban's air defense system, U.S. warplanes still do
not venture to fly low-altitude missions to engage the bulk of the
Taliban's armed forces. The Taliban, with their air defense system
"destroyed," still has several hundred operational Soviet-made ZU-23 twin
anti-aircraft 23mm guns, mounted on trucks.
These mobile guns were mostly used in ground battles during the past 10
years of civil war in Afghanistan, but are now being turned against allied
aircraft. In the Gulf in 1991, most allied warplanes were shot down by
ZU-23 and ZSU-23 self-propelled Shilka 23mm guns, and this time the same
may happen to the embarrassment of the U.S. government. The Taliban also
apparently still has some Stinger shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles,
supplied by the United States to resistance fighters during the Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Stingers are also a serious danger
to low-flying aircraft.
The low intensity allied air offensive in Afghanistan has in the first two
days destroyed most of the small Taliban air force. But since airpower was
not used much in the Afghan civil war, genuine damage to the Taliban war
machine seems to be negligible.
While the allied air force does not venture to fly low-altitude missions
against the Taliban, the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance will not benefit
much from the air campaign. And even if the allied attack planes do begin
to fly close air-support missions, the effect will be limited, since there
are only a few dozen attack planes on the two aircraft carriers in the
Arabian Sea to cover the whole of Afghanistan. In order to make a dent in
the Taliban militarily, the West still needs operational airfields near to
or inside of Afghanistan for its tactical air force.
Last week, Alexei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the State Duma defense
committee, told reporters that "there are growing misgivings in Moscow's
political and military circles over American actions in Afghanistan."
Russia is in fact already directly involved in the war inside Afghanistan,
said Arbatov, since it is supplying the Northern Alliance with tanks and
other heavy equipment together with Russian crews and technicians. But the
United States does not, in turn, help the Northern Alliance, and when its
long-postponed strike comes, it may be fainthearted. "Russia may find
itself facing a new enemy -- the Taliban -- alone," concluded Arbatov. To
add to Russian dissatisfaction, Washington is not volunteering to pay for
the tanks and guns Russia has supplied to the anti-Taliban forces.
Reliable sources in Moscow say that parts of the Russian 201st division
have also crossed from Tajikistan into Afghanistan to help fight the
Taliban. Russian officers and tank crews are operating with the
anti-Taliban forces only 30 kilometers north of Kabul. But now the United
States says it may stop the bombing campaign altogether "to assess damage."
The Taliban may then counterattack the rag-tag Northern Alliance and defeat
it, together with its Russian support. The covert Russian invasion of
Afghanistan would be exposed, the Russian public would be furious, the
elite would blame the treacherous Americans, and the new closeness between
Moscow and the West might end in acute acrimony.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.
