Disturbing lessons emerge from Israeli and U.S. efforts against terrorism Newhouse.com
April 24, 2002
By David Wood, Newhouse News ServiceWASHINGTON -- The global war on terrorism is getting disturbing news from Israel and Afghanistan: evidence that blunt, conventional military force doesn't work against irregular fighters and terrorists, and can even backfire dangerously.
The two similar experiences -- the Israeli effort to eradicate Palestinian suicide bombers and the U.S.-led campaign to kill or capture Taliban and al-Qaida fighters -- have left death, destruction and bitterness, raising popular resentment and driving the enemy underground in secretive cells that are almost impossible to locate and destroy, analysts said.
Although the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat is largely destroyed, Palestinian leaders this week vowed increased resistance. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, leaflets offer rewards for killing Americans, and some U.S. troops have been fired on in previously safe areas. United Nations relief officials report "increased violence ... targeted against relief workers."
Despite all the "past and current successes," said Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, the fact is that "U.S. military forces have not yet adapted to meet the evolving challenges" in the war on terrorism.
The results emerging from the separate U.S. and Israeli efforts "prove this approach just doesn't work," said William S. Lind, a military strategist, historian and author. Lind is an analyst at the conservative Free Congress Foundation in Washington.
Among the lessons coming thick and fast:
-- Sophisticated military technology isn't effective against low-tech opponents and may make things worse because it cannot discriminate between combatant and innocent bystander. The best weapon, in many cases, is a well-trained and seasoned infantryman. Even so, the Bush administration's proposed defense budget is heavily skewed toward big, high-tech and costly weapons.
-- In the political and moral arenas, local and international public opinion can trump even a convincing military victory, as may be the case in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For that reason, humanitarian assistance, such as providing emergency food and rebuilding war-damaged homes and schools, must quickly follow combat operations. If not, a neutral public can turn hostile.
-- Conventional military attacks against less powerful foes may alienate friends and allies. Analysts said U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan have angered many in the Arab world, where the more important struggle against terrorism may be taking place. And Israel has been heavily criticized by world leaders, including President Bush.
Cordesman said the Israeli offensive "will simply breed new forms of violence. ... No one (on the Palestinian side) seems cowed or deterred."
In that operation, the Israeli military pushed tanks, armored bulldozers and rocket-firing helicopter gunships into Palestinian cities beginning March 29 to kill what they term Palestinian terrorists and to rip out the infrastructure that supports them.
In Afghanistan, U.S. infantrymen, backed by strike fighters, heavy bombers and Predator unmanned spy planes, helicoptered into the eastern mountains March 1 to cordon off and kill a suspected concentration of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters. But evidence suggests most of the enemy got away.
Military commanders in both cases boasted that sophisticated technology made their operations more efficient and effective, helping to avoid civilian casualties and unnecessary damage.
"Afghanistan is the first war demonstrably won by superior information," crowed Dan Goure, a senior defense analyst at the Lexington Institute, a private think tank in Washington.
Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Detroit Free Press editorial board recently that bombs guided by lasers or satellites are so precise, "Once you drop the weapon you can go somewhere else."
But things look different on the ground.
Early last month in Afghanistan, a Predator spy plane monitored a sport utility truck full of passengers leaving a suspected al-Qaida hideout in bright morning sunshine, speeding along a dirt road. Ground commanders watched televised pictures and called in urgent airstrikes. Eventually, two F-16s dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs at the truck, which had pulled over and stopped.
Both bombs missed. A B-1 bomber was summoned, flying 3,000 miles one-way from the Air Force base on Diego Garcia in the southern Indian Ocean. It dropped 16 2,000-pound bombs into a gully where the truck passengers had taken shelter.
The operation required some $530 million worth of aircraft and more than $300,000 worth of bombs, plus costs for support crews and air bases.
The U.S. Central Command, which runs the war from its headquarters in Tampa, Fla., later acknowledged that none of the passengers was the high-level al-Qaida terrorist they had thought. The airstrikes killed 14, including three women and three children.
Despite such episodes, the Pentagon is pressing ahead to purchase high-tech weapons. Its proposed 2003 budget includes $23 billion for expensive systems conceived and designed during the Cold War, including the F-22 supersonic stealth fighter, the new strategic submarine, ballistic missile defenses and the 42-ton Crusader, a self-propelled artillery howitzer.
None of those weapons would have been used for Operation Anaconda, which kicked off March 2 with infantry attacks and repeated airstrikes into the Shah-e-Kot valley. Bombs ultimately destroyed three mountain villages where there were suspected al-Qaida hideouts, but no al-Qaida fighters were found.
U.S. commanders had planned to pump humanitarian assistance into the valley when the fighting concluded.
"This is an absolutely critical piece and we will fail miserably if humanitarian assistance doesn't come quickly on the heels of this operation," a senior officer said in an interview last month.
More than five weeks later, nothing has been done.
"We wound up not doing anything in the Shah-e-Kot area," another staff officer said in an interview this week. "Those three villages were destroyed, the people were gone, and nothing panned out there."
In the nearby cities of Khost and Gardez, where U.S. officials had hoped to win popular support away from al-Qaida, humanitarian assistance programs are hampered by lack of security.
Still, the biggest impact of these two military operations may be their repercussions elsewhere.
For Israel, one unwelcome result has been alienation of Jordan and Egypt, Cordesman said, undercutting their willingness to help interdict arms smugglers and infiltration of guerrilla fighters.
For the United States, Afghanistan may have diverted attention and resources from more important, if longer-term battles.
"The core of the war on terrorism has always been in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Egypt," said Lind, the military historian.
In those places, he said, the United States is forcing regimes to line up publicly against terrorism, thus alienating a large part of their own populations. The U.S. insistence on maintaining large military bases in Saudi Arabia, in part to support the war in Afghanistan, is also counterproductive, Lind said.
"We are making it abundantly clear that they are our puppets," Lind wrote in a recent unpublished essay. "If just one of those regimes falls, then Osama bin Laden will have good reason to think himself the victor -- even if he is doing so in hell."