Target Taliban
The heightened effort is underway.

By Charles E. Miller, a retired Air Force colonel
October 31, 2001 9:10 a.m.

n Afghanistan, the U.S. military objective is to find and destroy bin Laden and the al Qaeda terrorist network. There appear to be three main, and increasingly inter-related, efforts underway to achieve this objective:

Take down the Taliban as a military organization. The U.S. bombing campaign has put significant effort into targetting Taliban aircraft, air defense systems, command and control facilities, fuel and ammunition storage, maintenance facilities, and air bases and garrisons. There have also been reports that the "religious police force" buildings have been bombed. Attacks have also been launched against Taliban leaders.

Aid the Afghan resistance in defeating Taliban forces. One suspects the U.S. wants the resistance to do the bulk of the ground fighting. The U.S. is attacking, with somewhat increasing ferocity, the fielded military forces of the Taliban. Targets in the front lines, opposite Northern Alliance forces for example, have included tanks and artillery sites, ammunition storage locations, bunkers and command facilities, and other "troop concentrations." U.S. intelligence and targetting capabilities against the Taliban ground forces is reported to be improving daily. The U.S. is reportedly also air dropping ammunition and other supplies to anti-Taliban forces. The Russians have promised to deliver tanks and armored personnel carriers to the Northern Alliance to support their efforts.

Search for and destroy elements of the terrorist network. Information concerning this element of the campaign is sketchy. There are press reports of the U.S. using unmanned aerial vehicles to both search for and perhaps shoot at al Qaeda members. The Secretary of Defense has alluded to having un-timely knowledge of where bin Laden has been over the past weeks. We can imagine small teams of Special Forces finding and assessing likely al Qaeda hide sites, as well as command and logistics facilities (read caves).

Status Check

The campaign thus far has been exceptionally deliberate. There are many competing agendas driving what the military can do. It appears that the U.S. wants to take down the Taliban government but also wants a favorable replacement in the wings. The U.S. wants to destroy Taliban military capabilities with very stringent collateral damage criteria. The U.S. wants the anti-Taliban forces to do the main ground fighting, but does not want to seem to favor any particular group. The U.S. wants to win, but seems concerned about inflaming radical elements of the Islamic world.

As in most campaigns, the results have been mixed. The U.S. military can generally fly where and when it wishes over Afghanistan (with some altitude limitations.) The Taliban remains in control of much of Afghanistan and various U.S. officials have expressed surprise at Taliban toughness. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld reports that the Taliban's "ability to effectively oppose the forces on the ground that are in opposition to the Taliban is degraded and diminished." At least for the moment, the Taliban continues to receive ammunition, food, and fuel via smuggling routes from Iran and Pakistan. Bin Laden remains free and alive, but one suspects that U.S. knowledge of his network and its supporting facilities is much better than a month or so ago. It is, however, only week four, and the U.S. has not applied great force.

The mantra of military and civilian spokesmen alike has been, "The campaign is proceeding as planned." War is slow, they say, and victory will be slow. Cumulative effects are the key to this thinking.

Over the past two to three years, many U.S. planners have adopted a new theory of campaign planning called Effects Based Operations (EBO), in which objectives are translated into effects and very precise force is applied to achieving those effects. Since the Gulf War, U.S. planners have also given great weight to identifying and disrupting enemy networks that support or constitute war-fighting capabilities. It appears that these theories have been applied in the following way: The destruction of the Taliban military infrastructure leads to the effect of their running out of food, fuel, and ammunition, and mobility, which leads to the effect of their inability to fight, etc. In the end, this particular track mirrors what U.S. planners believe would happen if U.S. military infrastructures were attacked successfully — the U.S. would not be able to fight very effectively. It is not yet clear that this approach will be successful with the Taliban.

The measure of merit against the Taliban may not be limited to "networks disrupted"; it is more likely to be (or at least include) Taliban soldiers killed or wounded. These people and their al Qaeda allies think and fight differently than U.S. warriors. Dropping large numbers of dumb bombs on Taliban "front lines" is not a waste of time or effort. This does not necessarily mean a return to body counts — shock, disintegration, and disorientation are useful effects too, especially if the U.S. properly prepares its anti-Taliban allies to take advantage of opportunities.

With reported improved cooperation with anti-Taliban forces and knowledge of the ground situation (who is where), concentrated U.S. bomber strikes are increasingly possible. In the highly successful use of B-52s to defend the Marine base at Khe Sanh in Vietnam in 1968, bombs were dropped within 1/6th of a mile of the base perimeter — that's about 300 yards — to great effect. Perhaps the U.S. can do the same or better after thirty years.

In the end, one suspects that the U.S. will have to do some of its own ground fighting.