WASHINGTON: With the Taliban vanquished and Al Qaeda routed from its last mountain redoubts around Tora Bora, US policymakers are trying to decide how best to pursue their three-month-old “war against terrorism.”
The war has not only confirmed Washington’s military dominance at the dawn of the 21st century, but it also has established anti-terrorism as the chief rationale for US intervention virtually anywhere in the world, the same purpose served by anti-communism during the Cold War.
Some top officials, notably Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, insist that much remains to be done within Afghanistan’s borders, especially in tracking down the Mullah Omar, as well as Osama and his top aides who so far have eluded capture or death.
Indeed, US officials have expressed frustration at evidence that its Pakhtoon allies may actually have helped hide or smuggle America’s “Most Wanted” out of Afghanistan, without whom it will be impossible for Washington to declare a total victory.
Because the new government in Afghanistan will lack the incentive for finding the “evil-doers,” it will fall to US forces themselves to search out and destroy the Al Qaeda remnants, be it in Afghanistan or, more controversially, across the border in Pakistan.
Indeed, there appears to be growing sentiment both within the administration and in Congress for a military campaign against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, particularly in light of the unexpectedly swift success of the US strategy in Afghanistan. A recent poll shows a majority of the public favouring action to oust the Iraqi leader.
“Iraq is the big prize,” says Cohen, who has close ties to the hardline civilian leadership in the US Defence Department.
While officials confirm that contingency planning for war against Baghdad is well underway, US forces may also be engaged much further afield - albeit at a much-reduced level — in the immediate aftermath of the Afghanistan campaign.
Policymakers are also clearly interested in Yemen and Somalia where Al-Qaeda is believed to have operatives and followers and where its remnants may try to escape to after their defeat in Afghanistan.
Washington’s sudden new prominence in Central Asia and the Caspian, like its abrupt abandonment of the 1972 ABM treaty, underlines the degree to which unilateralist forces within the administration feel empowered by the military’s success. —Dawn/InterPress Service.