WASHINGTON: The United States launched a new kind of war in the skies over Afghanistan on Sunday: one that combined precision missiles and airdrops of food - high-tech sticks and low-tech carrots - in a campaign to topple the Taliban and deprive Osama bin Laden of his headquarters.
The shape of the airstrikes was familiar to those who have watched US armed forces go to war during the past decade. The visible part of the war on terrorism began with precision bombing against air defences and other military targets, much like the wars against Iraq in 1991 and Serbia in 1999.
But the addition of humanitarian aid airdrops within two hours of the first cruise missile strikes was an innovation. The one-sided conventional battle for Afghanistan’s airspace was coupled with a tougher unconventional battle for hearts and minds - not only in Afghanistan, but across the entire Muslim world.
“This is going to be a different kind of conflict,” said Eliot A. Cohen of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “Obviously the Afghans and the Taliban pose a different set of problems from earlier conflicts. But you may be seeing some new approaches to strategy as well.”
To an unusual degree, President Bush and his aides have emphasized that they want to help Afghanistan’s people even as they wage war against the Taliban regime. They also have stressed that they have no dispute with Islam, which Bush has called “a good and peace-loving faith.”
Thus, Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, close-mouthed about most details of the airstrikes, was happy to provide the time the food drops were launched - about 11:20pm in Afghanistan - and the amount delivered: 37,500 food packets.
The target appeared to be not only Afghans, but also the public in other Muslim countries, especially Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, whose governments’ support the United States hopes to keep.
The US drops of food, medicine and other aid to civilians in Afghanistan, which has suffered not only two decades of war but a year of drought and near-starvation, came along with leaflets and radio broadcasts to explain Bush’s purpose.
The humanitarian warfare has a practical purpose as well as a propaganda effect: US officials acknowledge that they hope to incite a general uprising against the Taliban, with the aim of depriving Osama and his lieutenants of their base of operations - without requiring US forces to fight on the ground.
US experts on the Muslim world gave the Bush administration generally high marks for incorporating humanitarian aid into its strategy, but said the impact is still uncertain. “It allows him to communicate the idea that our concern for the Afghans is not just words, it’s deeds,” said John L. Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University.
Michael C. Hudson of Georgetown’s Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, said that hostility to the US may not be blunted by airdrops of food in the midst of military actions. “The administration is clearly bringing a great deal of care and intelligence to this message, but I don’t know whether it will succeed,” Hudson said. “There’s a deeply rooted antipathy to American policies out there, and it’s based on issues like Israel, Palestine and Iraq.”
Esposito adds, “You can isolate the Taliban. But if you suggest that you’re going to do the same thing to Syria and Iran, that looks like a drive to make the US the police force for the whole area, people won’t agree.” —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.
