Afghanistan evokes Vietnam 'victory' memories


	April 5, 2002	atimes.com

Central Asia/Russia

Afghanistan evokes Vietnam 'victory' memories
By Mushahid Hussain

ISLAMABAD - At the height of the Vietnam War in January 1968, the Viet Cong launched their New Year "Tet" offensive, which was labeled a US military victory after great difficulty that included ejecting the guerrillas from their brief occupation of the US Embassy in Saigon.

But politically, the Americans had lost the battle for hearts and minds, both of the Vietnamese people, on whose behalf they claimed to combat the communists, and on behalf of the American people. It was then that a beleaguered president Lyndon Johnson, who decided not to seek re-election, sought advice on a way out of the Vietnam quagmire. A savvy general put it aptly: "Why don't we just proclaim to the world that we have won the war and just get the hell out of Vietnam?"

Six months after the launch of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, may be perhaps too soon to draw dangerous analogies, particularly with Vietnam. But certainly, the proclamation of victory in Afghanistan by the world's sole superpower remains elusive.

The Washington Post reported on March 30 that the US "manhunt for terrorists has fared poorly" in Afghanistan. Only three top al-Qaeda members have been captured, while the 15 most-wanted according to the Pentagon list are still at large, and 21 of the top Taliban leaders remain unaccounted for.

Three developments may be testimony to the fact that chances are growing of the US war on terrorism in Afghanistan being extended and expanding beyond Afghanistan into Pakistan as well.

First, by mid-April, 1,700 troops of a British crack fighting unit newly inducted into Afghanistan will be ready for action, with a view to mopping up "remnants of al-Qaeda and Taliban". This is the biggest British overseas military deployment since the Gulf War. As part of the broader war effort, the US military presence in the region, which includes Pakistan, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, has now reached 80,000, an all-time high since the 1991 Gulf War.

Second, the much-touted return of former King Zahir Shah to Afghanistan has been postponed several times, and the last date he was scheduled to return, March 25, was apparently changed after a telephone call from US President George W Bush to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi urging him to beef up security for the former king given "credible intelligence" of a possible threat to his life. Now, the new date of Zahir Shah's return is April 16.

Third, while there is serious talk of the United States expanding its operations into Pakistani territory, including the induction of troops and Special Forces, the war on terrorism remains open-ended without any finite boundaries, targets or a timeframe. The first indication of this was a March 21 interview by the US commander in Afghanistan, Major-General Frank Hagenbeck, followed by statements five days later by US senators visiting Afghanistan.

The Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman, Senator Richard Shelby, stated after touring the Bagram airbase close to Kabul, "I am sure some of the terrorists have gone across to Pakistan" from Afghanistan. He expressed the hope that "the government of Pakistan is going to join us in a big way to rid the border of the al-Qaeda who would use Pakistan as a sanctuary". Senator Bill Nelson added that US forces might have to be inducted on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border "to rid al-Qaeda and other terrorists from going across the porous border".

In a March 27 interview with the Washington Times, Pakistani Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar stated "there is no problem, US forces can cross the border into Pakistan if necessary". In an interview with CNN a few days before that, US Vice President Dick Cheney said that the "al-Qaeda are regrouping and the al-Qaeda are still scattered around Afghanistan", a view echoed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who said the US military focus in Afghanistan is "to track down and try to find senior al-Qaeda and Taliban figures".

In a visit to US forces stationed in Afghanistan, Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai, while thanking the Americans for removing the Taliban regime, made it clear that "US troops will stay in Afghanistan until the al-Qaeda are driven out", a mission that is yet to be accomplished.

On March 28, in a joint operation of Pakistani security forces and the American Federal Bureau of Investigation in the third-biggest Pakistani city of Faisalabad, about 40 alleged al-Qaeda and Taliban remnants, including 20 Arabs from several nationalities, were nabbed. The Arabs were handed over to the Americans for interrogation and possible dispatch to Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The de facto head of al-Qaeda military operations, Osama bin Laden's No 3, Abu Zubaydah, was among those captured after a gunfight in which two of the militants were killed, and has since been undergoing interrogation.

Soon after the mid-March bombing of a church close to the US Embassy in Islamabad, which resulted in two American deaths, dependents and non-essential staff of the embassy were evacuated on orders of the US State Department. Pakistani security sources had attributed an al-Qaeda link to the church bombing, which they said was directed at American targets since US and other diplomats regularly worshipped at the church, rather than an attack on Christians as such.

As plans are apparently afoot for the expansion of the war, efforts are under way to ensure that the political reconstruction of Afghanistan continues. A significant step forward in this is the decision to hold the Loya Jirga, the Grand Council, the traditional mode of decision-making in Afghanistan, in Kabul from June 10-16. This would pave the way for a new transitional government for the next two years, because the mandate of the Afghan Interim Administration expires on Ju On the flip side, however, while Washington's main targets Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have evaded capture and there is no evidence of their being killed, the war in Afghanistan has certainly been a boon for US military scientists. Reports say they have used the war as a virtual laboratory for new sophisticated weaponry and technology, including a "themobaric" bomb designed to bust bunkers and destroy everything - and everyone - in a cave, bunker or building, for which it was deployed with devastation in Afghanistan.

(Inter Press Service)