Pubdate: Thu, 28 Mar 2002
Source: Moscow Times, The (Russia)
Copyright: 2002 The Moscow Times
Contact:  http://www.moscowtimes.ru/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/903
Author: Pavel Felgenhauer
Note: Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent defense analyst.

NARCO-FEUDALISM STILL RULES

General Tommy Franks, the U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan, came to 
Moscow last week to pay a courtesy visit. Franks commands the war via 
satellite from his central command staff complex in Tampa, Florida, but he 
told reporters in Moscow that he and his wife were on the move for a week, 
going to Africa, visiting troops in Afghanistan and finally coming to Russia.

Of course, Moscow is not directly involved in military operations in 
Afghanistan. Still, Moscow is the main sponsor of the Tajik faction of the 
anti-Taliban Northern Alliance that is the backbone of the interim Afghan 
government's rag-tag army. Without basic Russian support, the allied 
mission would be that much harder to accomplish.

Last fall, as the United States was pounding the Taliban to bits from the 
air, Iran also strongly supported the effort. But after the Taliban and 
al-Qaida fighters melted into the Afghan wilderness, the short-lived 
alliance ended and the Iranians are today, according to U.S. officials, 
trying to flush the Westerners down the same drain as the Taliban.

Moscow is not yet turning its coat, and Franks got a warm reception. 
Contentious issues, like the planned U.S. military personnel arrival in 
Georgia or the coming invasion of Iraq, were not discussed. Iraq is a 
political matter, not fit for a general to elaborate on, while Washington 
has not made its final decision. Georgia, Franks told me, is the 
responsibility of the U.S. European command and nothing to do with him.

In Moscow, the remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan are 
still considered to be potentially deadly opponents. Officials mostly wish 
Franks good luck in rooting them out, though many generals that fought in 
Afghanistan in the 1980s truly believe that the United States is getting 
itself into the same quagmire they found themselves in. Franks came to 
Moscow after handing out medals to U.S. servicemen who had just finished a 
major operation against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters remaining in 
southeastern Afghanistan, along the border with Pakistan. Franks insists 
that Operation Anaconda was a resounding success: It was announced that up 
to 800 fighters were slain, and the Shah-i-Kot region was captured and 
cleared of opposing forces.

However, less than 50 bodies were actually found. U.S. officers allege that 
Afghan allied soldiers told the Taliban and al-Qaida of the operation well 
beforehand. Afghan soldiers, led by General Zia Lodin, should have done the 
main job in Operation Anaconda, with U.S. forces in support. But the 
Afghans swiftly retreated after meeting resistance, and U.S. soldiers were 
rushed to the front, sustaining serious casualties.

The weather in the Afghan mountains was bad during the 11 days of Operation 
Anaconda. Transport helicopters often could not land or evacuate troops on 
time. Strategically important hilltops were captured with losses, only to 
be soon abandoned. And in the end, apparently, the Taliban and al-Qaida 
fighters slipped away in large numbers.

Such stories tend to elicit a smile from Russian veterans of the 1980s 
Afghan. They had exactly the same experiences. (The Afghan allies always 
slip away if their is any serious trouble, helicopters are never on time, 
enemy body counts are always falsified and so on.) After almost 10 years of 
combat in Afghanistan, the total number of enemy fighters killed, as 
reported by commanders over the years, exceeded the entire official 
population of the country -- a fact often joked about in Russian military 
and intelligence communities.

Franks himself did a stint in Vietnam in 1967, where the body count became 
virtually the only measure of military success. The United States won the 
count, losing some 60,000 men, to Vietnam's estimated 2 million lives lost. 
But the war was lost.

The Afghan economy and society is based on two pillars: tribal warlordism 
and the heroin trade. These two pillars are intertwined and mutually 
reinforcing. The Taliban and al-Qaida tried without much success to 
dismantle this narco-feudalist system, so when the United States attacked 
the heroin traders of the Northern Alliance and the Pashtun traditional 
tribal chiefs, all joined the fight for freedom.

But now it's the U.S.-led coalition that is the main potential threat to 
narco-warlordism. Franks insists: "We will find and destroy the pockets of 
resistance." However, while Americans poke around and disrupt 
drug-trafficking, the Afghan two-pillar system will produce and support 
anti-Western rogues -- many more than Franks' men can ever hope to kill.
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