Preparations for a Nearly Invisible Campaign?

US spokesmen from President George W. Bush on down have said, over and over, that many of the operations of the war against terrorism may not be visible to the public. In fact, there are growing signs that the campaign may be conducted largely out of public view for three reasons:

• A considerable portion of the campaign is likely to be conducted by special operations forces of various kinds; these sort of operations are routinely secret, and many of the actions carried out by special operations elements during Operation Desert Storm a decade ago are still unknown to the public,
• There is a clear-cut sensitivity on the part of those Muslim countries which may be used as bases or staging areas not to inflame their own publics, and thus some of what is going on is likely to be kept well shrouded, and
• The Taliban have banned television, so while some newsmen with satellite transmitters have managed to broadcast from Kabul so far, it is far from clear that there will be any pictures coming from the other side in any conflict, while international news channels managed to broadcast from Baghdad throughout Desert Storm.

The second of these considerations has already manifested itself in the brief flurry of discussion over whether or not the US Air Force could use a command and control center it had built at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. During Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's visit to the Kingdom, the whole issue was finessed. The Saudis do not want to be perceived as being the platform from which raids against Afghanistan are launched, but — since Iran has said its airspace is not open to US aircraft — Saudi Arabia would not be a logical basing option for attacks on Afghanistan anyway. As for command and control, however, that is by its very nature invisible to the Saudi public and Prince Sultan Air Base is remote from population centers; it may well be that the Saudis will permit its use but simply never confirm it.

Another interesting example of sensitivity to the possibility of destabilizing regional states seemed to be apparent when the US Navy dispatched the carrier Kitty Hawk from Japan to join the battle groups already in the region: the Kitty Hawk embarked without its air wing. It is apparently intended to serve as a platform for special operations forces. The US Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Nightstalkers), which carries Delta Force, Rangers and other special ops forces into battle, is known to be trained in carrier operations and was prepared to insert into Haiti from carriers a few years ago. The use of the Kitty Hawk is presumably intended either to avoid having to use Pakistani bases for such operations or to have an alternative basing option if the Pakistani option were to be foreclosed for political reasons. And since other US forces may be operating from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, countries with considerable experience in keeping things from the international press, operational security is likely there too. (There may be some subtleties in play there as well. An early report that US C-130s had landed in Uzbekistan was denied by the Uzbekis, but the denial seemed to deny that any American cargo aircraft had landed. Though primarily a cargo aircraft, variants of the C-130 play important roles in special operations as gunships, paratroop insertion aircraft and helicopter refueling tankers.)

There will, of course, be visible elements to any real combat operations: the US will certainly want to neutralize the Taliban's air force and air defense forces, and thus conventional air campaigns can be expected both to precede and to accompany whatever special operations are carried out.

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