War rages on...according to whose plan?

by Ed Felien
It’s a fairy tale war. No American casualties. Superior air power levels Taliban defenses. The enemy flees at the sight of oncoming Northern Alliance troops. The two last major cities controlled by the Taliban, Konduz and Kandahar, seem on the brink of collapse.
It seems so easy.
Perhaps, too easy. Is it possible these easy successes have been elaborate bait laid out to lead us into a trap?
Qur’an, 9.5:
So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush.
And, again, Qur’an, 8.65:
Oh Prophet! Urge the believers to war; if there are twenty patient ones of you they shall overcome two hundred, and if there are a hundred of you they shall overcome a thousand of those who disbelieve, because they are a people who do not understand.
Is it possible that the Sept. 11 suicide bombing was meant to draw us into war with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan? Is it possible that, according to his timetable, he meant to surrender the major cities and retreat into the hills and caves before Ramadan began? Will he and the Taliban spend the month of Ramadan in prayer and fasting, spiritually preparing themselves for the final Jihad beginning with the new moon on December 14?
Can they hope to defeat a militarily and technologically superior American-led force with their rag-tag collection of eclectic weapons? The militarily smart British Imperial Army was crushed by Afghan warriors in the nineteenth century, and bin Laden and the Taliban defeated the technologically superior Soviet Union and forced their withdrawal in 1989. They believe their faith in Islam and their Jihad was the major factor in the destruction of the Soviet Union as a world power. They now believe they are ready to destroy the United States of America.
What do they want?
Their immediate goal would be to drive the infidels (Christians, Jews and Communists) out of the Middle East. They probably want to re-establish the Caliphate of the Ottoman Empire, when the Muslim world extended from Spain, through North Africa to the Arabian Peninsula to Western China and Southern Russia around the Northern Medit-erranean up to the doors of Venice and Vienna. They dream of seeing the Muslim world reunited under a Wahhabib fundamentalism more strict than the Islam of Mohammed and the first ummah (Muslim community) of the 7th century.
This form of Islamic fundamentalism has a strong appeal to the poor and disenfranchised in developing nations that feel they are drowning in a tidal wave of Western materialism and commercialism. They see the Saud family in Saudi Arabia grown fat and decadent, propped up by the presence of U. S. troops on land sacred to the Prophet. They see the regimes in Egypt, Jordan and Syria as degenerate. Their leaders get rich, the poor get little. When Sadat maintained the right of Israel to exist he was gunned down by an Islamic fundamentalist. Iraq is a secular state, but U.S. sanctions kill 5,000 Iraqi children a month. Muslims can unite in their opposition to these governments and their hope to re-establish pride in an Islamic nation:
Qur’an, 10.49
Say: I do not control for myself any harm, or any benefit except what Allah pleases; every nation has a term; when their term comes, they shall not then remain behind for an hour, nor can they go before their time.
The strategy of bin Laden and the Taliban is, on one hand, very old and very simple: occupy the high ground and make the enemy come to you. One person guarding a mountain pass can hold off a hundred if the path will only allow one at a time.
In many ways, guerrilla war is to positional war as go is to chess. Go is the Japanese variant of an ancient Chinese game called Wei Chi. It is played by laying stones down one at a time on a board. The object is to place your stones in such a way that when they are linked there is space inside their area where they can breathe. You capture your opponent’s stones by surrounding them before they can create space to breathe. In chess, the objective is to control the center of the board and destroy your opponent by bringing heavier and heavier pieces of artillery to bear. In go the guerrilla controls the countryside and swims like a fish in the sea. In chess the positional army controls the cities and finds itself choked off from supplies and exhausted from a never-ending battle of a thousand blows. China, Cuba, Vietnam and the Taliban victory over the Soviets are examples of victorious guerrilla strategies.
But it would be a mistake to think that bin Laden’s strategy is merely to control Afghanistan. It is only one section of the board. True, it is the section where he has lured the world’s greatest superpower into a duel on his terms. He has dropped stones around the major cities, around roads and supply routes, and when he chooses the time he will tighten the noose.
But he is not limited to playing on a board confined to the borders of Afghanistan. For at least the past five years, he has been training Al Qaeda militants from neighboring countries. Many of these warriors belong to tribes that border Afghanistan, and, in fact, most of the neighboring tribes have members on both sides of the border with a shared history of hundreds of years of smuggling.
There is probable safe haven and a source of re-supply in all of the countries bordering Afghanistan.
Iran, which is Shi’ite Muslim, as opposed to Sunni like the Taliban and bin Laden, would seem to be the least likely, but it could be the most promising for the guerrillas. There are over 3 million refugees in Iran, and no one knows what their politics or religious preferences are. It is easy to hide in refugee camps, and the long border and Sunni tribes straddling that border make it an easy choice.
The former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are providing air bases for the
U.S. effort, but they are not publicizing that cooperation for fear of inflaming their own pro-Taliban Islamic militants. In February the State Department said the Uzbek government’s “poor human rights record worsened.” Sept. 11 changed that, and in October Uzbekistan was not one of the “Countries of Particular Concern.” The Uzbek government is still rounding up Islamic militants who want more religious freedom. According to Khilafah News Service, a conservative Islamic source: “Uzbekistan has jailed over 7,000 people for holding views not shared by the government, according to the Independent Human Rights Organization of Uzbekistan. By law, Uzbeks who choose to pray must attend state-approved mosques, and under a variety of circumstances, religious tracts cannot be legally exchanged. Freedom of association here is rigorously supervised; groups that are not approved by the state are not permitted to convene.” Membership in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group that supports the Taliban Wahhabib, can lead to 10 years in prison.
Hizb-ut-Tahrir has probably 4,000 members in Kyrgyzstan. Khilafah News Service says, “Criminal proceedings were instituted against 117 of them for disseminating extremist ideas. Incidentally, yesterday [Nov. 1] the Suzak District (Dzhalal-Abad Region, near the borders of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) court passed sentences on five active members of the Hizb-ut-Tahrir party. Rakhimzhan Khamrabayev was given 17 years in prison, and Mekhrazhdin Abdukhakarov, Abdumalik Tashkulov and Rakhimshan Umarov were sentenced to five years imprisonment each, and Lachinbek Ikramov got three years in prison. They were all detained while distributing leaflets calling for the setting up of an Islamic caliphate in Central Asia.”
The Taliban have supported training camps for Islamic militants from Iran, Uyghur Chinese from Xinjiang, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Pakistan. Yemenese, Saudis and Algerians have also been welcome. The Saudi government is especially worried that a continuation of the war after Ramadan will produce massive demonstrations that could destabilize their government. Turkey and Algeria have repressed the militants, and their military governments are just barely keeping a lid on dissent.
Pakistan is a particularly interesting political problem. The CIA was largely responsible for the military coup that toppled the last elected government in Pakistan. Then they helped set up the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence agency where they dropped $3 billion to help recruit and arm Islamic militants to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis gave this money to the most zealous Islamic militants, which meant the money funded Arabs and the head of the Afghan Hizb Party, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. This guaranteed a post-war Taliban government, Afghan Arabs and an anti-American policy. It also meant zealous Pakistani militants would chafe at Indian control of Kashmir and would do what they could to destabilize that region. Their actions almost caused a war and exchange of nuclear warheads. The Pakistani government is so committed to these Islamic warriors that, when Kunduz was falling to the Northern Alliance, rather than see these warriors surrendered to an uncertain end, they flew planes in at least three times to rescue them and bring them back to Pakistan. Those troops are probably now on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border waiting for the end of Ramadan to begin fighting again.
The Northern Alliance is a very unfunny joke. They have a deplorable record of human rights abuses: summary executions, rapes, drafting children, and they are known to control most of the opium in Afghanistan. They have hardly ever engaged the Taliban in this latest war. They are quite content to sit outside a city and let the U.S. pound the Taliban with air strikes. Most of the time, the Taliban retreat in an orderly fashion, melting into the countryside. Then, the Northern Alliance swaggers into town as the conquering heroes. When the Taliban have chosen to make a stand, as in Kunduz and Kandahar, the Northern Alliance advance falters. They don't really want to fight the Taliban in hand to hand combat. The Taliban probably agreed to give up Kunduz after most of its members had slipped over the borders into Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. When there was no more room for them in those areas, some of the remaining group surrendered and changed sides–probably so they could organize a fifth column inside the Northern Alliance army. The Northern Alliance doesn’t require much of a loyalty oath. It accepted the Taliban as brothers and let most of them keep their weapons.
Meanwhile, Osama bin Laden is enjoying a peaceful and spiritually fulfilling Ramadan, probably sleeping during the day and traveling on horseback (he likes to ride horses) at night to visit one of his four wives. He has probably had five years to construct underground bunkers in preparation for U.S. bombardments. The bunkers he built in the mid-1980s withstood anything the Soviets could throw at him. The newer ones are probably better equipped and more secure.
Expect him to make another announcement at the end of Ramadan, Dec. 14 or 15, appealing for support from the Muslim world for his struggle against the U.S. and for Muslims everywhere to rise up against their secular government and install a Taliban-style government based on the Qur’an and Shariah Law.
He is, now, the Hidden Imam. The tradition of the Hidden Imam goes back to the 9th century when the Caliph locked up the direct descendant of Mohammed, and the Imam (leader of the Muslim community) could communicate with his followers only through his agents. The Ayatollah Khomeini used this indirect way to address his followers when he was exiled (first to Iraq and then to Paris) to direct the revolution in Iran, the first successful Islamic fundamentalist revolution. Quite certainly Osama bin Laden appreciates the value of this myth, and he is content to be seen as the persecuted hero sticking up for Muslims against a powerful U.S. bully.
What should the U.S. do?
First, the U.S. must present the case against bin Laden to the Muslim world. The imams must be confronted with proof of bin Laden’s involvement in the Sept. 11 bombings. There must be a religious indictment of bin Laden by Muslims based on Shariah law from the Qur’an. This would be the most effective way to undercut his fundamentalist support.
Second, the U.S. must be absolutely clear about what this struggle is about. It is a struggle between capitalism and freedom of choice and feudalism and the sanctity of privilege. They want to set up a society where some people are better and more powerful than others: men over women, Muslims over Christians and Jews. We believe in a society where all are equal. Understanding this, then, we need to encourage the development of capitalism in Afghanistan. They need to believe they have a stake in their future.
Third, the U.S. needs to examine its policies in the Islamic world, and where mistakes have been made the U.S. must apologize for them. It was criminal for the U.S. to overthrow the democratically elected government of Mossadegh in Iran and install a Shah on the Peacock Throne. Reagan appointed George Schultz Secretary of State and Caspar Weinberger Secretary of Defense. Both were from Bechtel, an oil and construction firm with strong ties to the Saudi family. We need to honestly acknowledge that, and we need to honestly admit how much the interests of big oil companies have become the interests of the U.S. government. Wasn’t big oil the reason for the Gulf War? Wasn't it about preserving the privileges of big oil in Kuwait? A few years back when Madeline Albright said on “60 Minutes” that 5,000 children’s deaths a month was an acceptable figure for imposing sanctions on Iraq, she insulted every Arab in the Middle East. She was saying their lives were without value. The U.S. government owes every Arab in the Middle East an apology.
There are other things we should do. We should spend money to build roads, schools and hospitals. But we should also encourage American Muslims and other religious institutions to rebuild mosques. We should take care of refugees, but we should also try to return these refugees to the countryside so they can witness to the effectiveness of U.S. efforts.
Finally, one of the most important things we could do would be to try to understand Muslim, Arab and Afghanistan culture. Rumi, one of the most important Muslim poets, was born in Afghanistan in 1207. He is considered the founder of the Sufis. They believe enlightenment comes from ecstasy, and that God wants us to love and be happy. The fundamentalist Wahhabib movement in the late 18th century was a reaction against this. They tried to stamp the joy out of Islam. The Taliban are still trying.