Transcript
JAMES M. LINDSAY: (In progress)—fellow here at the Brookings Institution and coordinator of the Brookings project on terrorism and the American foreign policy.
I want to welcome you to another in our regular series of briefings on America's war against terrorism. Since the last time we gathered in this room, there have been tremendous changes on the ground in Afghanistan. Last week there were mounting complaints that the war was going too slow, there was no evidence of progress, military officials were counseling patience and acknowledging—in the words of Admiral Stufflebeem—the tenaciousness of the Taliban fighters. There was a lot of grumbling, particularly on the right end of the political spectrum about the administration's half-measures in Afghanistan, and even some whispers about—starting to think about trying to find face-saving ways to extract the United States from its involvement in Afghanistan.
This week the problems are entirely different. This week the problems are that the war is going much too fast. Mazar-e Sharif has fallen, Taliban forces have abandoned, in a none-too-orderly fashion, the capital city of Kabul. The Northern Alliance, after initially pledging to stay of Kabul, has rolled in—not only has rolled in, but apparently some of its forces may have pushed as much as 50 miles past Kabul toward Kandahar. Our reports this morning show even greater defections among Taliban forces. There's at least one report that Taliban forces had abandoned the eastern city of Jalalabad; that Pashtun opposition groups were forming and moving on Kandahar; also reports that Taliban forces, rather than—as initially reported—attempting to make a last-ditch stand at Kandahar, are themselves abandoning Kandahar and heading to the mountains to the east and west of the Kabul-Kandahar road.
Now the administration no doubt prefers to have this week's set of problems than to have last week's set of problems, but nonetheless, the rapid military gains do pose problems for the administration. On the military front remains the question of what the U.S. military should do first. General strategy in these situations is to try to exploit the adversary's retreat. How do you do that? What's the most effective way to do it? To what extent should U.S. military forces, as opposed to Northern Alliance or Afghan fighters, do it? And again, keeping in mind that the ultimate objective is not simply to route Taliban forces, but to destroy Al Qaeda, and particularly to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden.
On the humanitarian front, a whole series of issues are raised about what should be done immediately, in the near term, to bring aid to impoverished Afghanis, and particularly given that winter is about to begin in Afghanistan.
Political, security questions: What happens next in Kabul? Is it time to bring in a multi-national—perhaps U.N., perhaps all-Muslim—peacekeeping force—an issue that has been bandied about in the last couple of days. If so, what role would a country like Pakistan have to play in it?
Another set of political issues raised by the Northern Alliance entry into Kabul has to do with its consequences for U.S.-Pakistani relations. Does this pose a threat to General Musharraf's rule in Pakistan? And also, a broader set of considerations in terms of what this means and how the events in Afghanistan will effect the Arab world, and how this will be perceived, and also whether or not rapid military events on the ground in Afghanistan may create some space for the administration to launch political initiatives in the Middle East peace process.
To help us answer these and other questions are my distinguished colleagues here from Brookings. To my far right is Michael O'Hanlon, senior fellow and expert on defense studies here at Brookings, and the author, most recently, of "Defending America: The Case for National Missile Defense," a relevant topic given that Mr. Putin is in the country. To his left is Martin Indyk, senior fellow, again, in foreign policy studies and two-time U.S. ambassador to Israel. And immediately to my right is Stephen Cohen, senior fellow at Brookings and author of, among many other books, "The Pakistan Army."
We're going to begin this morning with Mike O'Hanlon.
MICHAEL E. O'HANLON: Thanks, Jim. I think this is very good news what we've seen in the last couple of days, and as Jim put it, this week's problems, as much as they may be still significant, are much better than last week's. And I personally have been very worried about the ability of a 15,000-strong, rag-tag coalition group to defeat a 40- to 50,000-strong Taliban backed up by several thousand dedicated Arab fighters in the kinds of circumstances and kinds of poverty we see in Afghanistan. So I had great concern about this battle stagnating, getting bogged down. It still may, but clearly what we've seen in the last few weeks or—excuse me, last few days is, to my mind, extremely encouraging.
The military problem here has to be solved for any of the other parts of our strategy to work. There was a real chance that it was going to, and as I say, it still may not in the highland regions or in Kandahar, but I'm extremely encouraged. So mark me down as a happy guy today and as an optimist who would also want to congratulate the Northern Alliance and the U.S. military and the Bush administration for what has been a very good last few days.
But let me focus in my brief remarks on two main things. One is the big question of what's really going on here. Are we seeing a tactical retreat by the Taliban or are we seeing essentially a breakdown of its forces? There's probably some elements of both going on, but it's worth trying to analyze which pieces of evidence we see in support of each possible hypothesis because that will tell us a lot about what may be coming next.
And then, secondly, I want to talk about what I see as the big question, and my colleagues are more expert at assessing it than I am, so I will just begin to develop the question, but it's the basic question of how do you get the Pashtun to start defecting. If they don't, I fear that one way or another this war will still bog down, and therefore, I think we really have to think of all the instruments at our disposal—military, economic, political and otherwise—to try to encourage that kind of process.
In terms of this big question—what's going on on the battlefield? Have the Taliban just turned into chickens, as their fearless leader, Mullah Omar, seems to be calling them in his not-to-friendly encouragement to his own fighters to stop retreating and get serious? Or are they essentially retreating tactically to the south where they have a stronger ethnic base to they c