How Not to Invade Afghanistan

By Crispin Sartwell

The military buildup, call-up of reserves, and requests for funding and a declaration of war, strongly suggest that we are in for a major and ambitious military campaign. And the president's pledge to "end" regimes that harbor terrorists suggests something about what form such a campaign might take. It is possible that after a campaign of bombing we will invade Afghanistan. And then there is Iraq; there is Pakistan; there may be others.

Obviously, we are not going to occupy these countries for any length of time. That is impossible among other things because of the proximity of these countries to Russia. The only alternative to occupation is to set up puppet regimes and try to find them some legitimacy. So as we contemplate war, we had better think - as I'm sure our leaders are thinking - about the political situation on the ground.

My wife has suggested that an invading army might be greeted by at least the women of Afghanistan as a liberating force. I doubt it, but there is an insight there; the Taliban regime is among the least tolerant and most repressive in the world, and there are surely many people who in their hearts are not fundamentalists of the Taliban type and would prefer a different regime.

If we want to have any degree of acceptance among the women of Afghanistan, however, we had better not start by carpet-bombing Kabul and killing their children. Then we will simply be regarded as invaders to be resisted by any means necessary, and we will be in for an endless guerilla war of the sort we fought in Vietnam and the Russians in Afghanistan itself.

So it is essential that the bombs be targeted as specifically as possible against real military targets, and that collateral damage be kept to an absolute minimum.

No matter how much underground resentment of the Taliban there may be in Afghanistan, they of course have wide popular support, in part precisely because the country is extremely Moslem and extremely devout. So we need to be ready to express respect for Islam, and to demonstrate it in concrete and immediate ways: rebuilding mosques, supporting moderate Moslem clerics, and so forth.

We will gain popular support in these countries if we can bring about an immediate improvement in quality of life. That is possible. Iraq's internal economy has been devastated by our sanctions: direct economic assistance is obviously in order if we administer it or Afghanistan, which is one of the poorest nations in the world and one that has, like Iraq, been devastated by war.

Pakistan is also poor, and is extremely badly administered. Bringing predictability to these nations, rebuilding their devastated infrastructures, and respecting their beliefs and their lives will go some way to making such an incredibly difficult project successful.

Every stage of the campaign, then, must be directed in part to the political situation in the outcome, or else the whole campaign is doomed. We can inflict a violent expression of our rage and thirst for vengeance, or we can try to do something practical for the peoples of middle and central Asia, something that also changes the conditions that encourage the growth of terrorist organizations.

That is the only long-term hope for the success of our mission.