November 9, 2001	Friday	Shaba’an 22, 1422

WASHINGTON, Oct 8: One month after the military campaign began in Afghanistan, the United States is still grappling with the need to explain to its people in definable and easily understandable language, what it has managed to achieve in terms of destroying the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

The military operation, codenamed Operation Enduring Freedom, started on Sept 7 amidst general expectations that America’s immense deployment of technologically advanced weaponry would produce quick results.

But some 2,000 sorties later, the Taliban still appear to be functioning as a fighting force and Osama bin Laden remains an elusive figure.

Was there any one thing that US policy-makers had overlooked when launching the military strikes against the Taliban, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was asked in a long interview on public television on Wednesday night, marking the first month of the military offensive. The secretary said it was known that the Taliban were harbouring Osama and that Osama was providing financial support to the Taliban, but what was unclear was the extent to which the Taliban were philosophically, ideologically and religiously connected to Osama and Al Qaeda.

It was now obvious that the Taliban and Al Qaeda were one, but, the secretary said, the US would defeat them.

Mr Rumsfeld stressed that, in assessing the results of the campaign so far, it should be remembered that there was no road map in the sense that the Taliban did not have a properly organized army and did not have an identifiable infrastructure that could be quickly taken out. But the US-led coalition had made progress in eliminating the Taliban’s defence capability and could now operate over Afghanistan; it had also destroyed the Taliban’s military installations. The operation was now in its third phase that consisted of assisting forces on the ground of groups opposed to the Taliban.

A situation had been created, the secretary claimed, where the Taliban were not really in command of the country and were not able to function freely. But they had found means to resupply themselves, and had about 40,000 fighters at their disposal. The Northern Alliance is said to have about 15,000 troops that are assisted by special units of the coalition.

The Taliban, according to Mr Rumsfeld, had begun using mosques and residential areas to store ammunition and men to deter coalition forces from attacking them for fear of civilian casualties. But this stratagem might backfire because the Afghan people, the defence secretary said, did not want to be put in a position of risk, and at some point the Taliban would find themselves working in a hostile environment.

Official statements on the progress of the campaign notwithstanding, the feeling persists, as reflected often in questions asked at press briefings here and in newspaper comments, that there is something of a stalemate in Afghanistan, with efforts to assemble a coherent political alternative to the Taliban also still in an amorphous stage. The front lines remain largely where they were a month ago, although reports on Thursday said opposition forces in the north had gained ground towards Mazar-i-Sharif. There is debate on whether swifter progress is possible without putting American troops on the ground, and the pressure for quick results has been brought into focus because of the approach of Ramazan and winter.