The Last War and the Next One:
Lessons to Learn and Not Learn, 1

It used to be said that generals always fight the last war. At least in the US military, that has not been true for some time. The military operations which began in Afghanistan on October 7 and which are all but over now are as different as they could be from either the last major war for US forces — Desert Storm — or the various Balkan and Somali peacekeeping operations of recent years. An unprecedented combination of overwhelming air power, special operations forces, and local allies on the ground (and some specifically Afghan elements, such as the tradition of changing sides when the victor becomes apparent) led to the rapid collapse of what proved to be a particularly brittle regime.

But if US military planners have shown a remarkable ability not to refight the last war in recent years, that is less true for some others, and already the armchair strategists are calling for a very similar campaign — air power plus local allies on the ground — to eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein. It might work, but Saddam has proven time and again to be highly resistant to overthrow, while the Taliban had come to depend increasingly on non-Afghanis for their military support. The differences (and the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, of course) are profound, and the eclectic, unusual campaign which worked in Afghanistan certainly would not guarantee success in Iraq.

Because most of the covert and special operations side of the war is still not public, and because even those privy to the details will take some time to grasp the "lessons learned" in Afghanistan, it is much too early to offer any kind of after-action assessment that has much hope of holding up over time. While recognizing that, this Dossier attempts to look at the war just fought and various suggestions for what and where the next phase of Operation Enduring Freedom might take place, and look at the strengths demonstrated by the recent operations and the varying challenges faced in different potential venues.

Both US political and military leaders have made clear, from the beginning, that they see the war against Al-Qa‘ida and the broader war on terror as a long-term effort, one which may well take many years; Al-Qa‘ida is a clearer target than the more amorphous, generic target of supporters of terrorism in general (since terrorism is a tactic used by many different movements at different times). Thus any discussion of "who is next" involves a variety of judgments, including prioritization of targets and assessments of risk and costs involved. It is also clear that within the present US Administration are those who want to focus, initially, on those directly involved in the September 11 attacks on the United States, and not be diverted by other targets, however tempting; while others cry "On to Baghdad" and want to deal with Iraq before dealing with smaller terrorist groups, even if the latter are directly linked to Al-Qa‘ida.

The purpose of this Dossier is to look at some of the possible next-step scenarios, but only after reviewing what lessons seem already to be apparent from the operations in Afghanistan so far. The scenarios will be looked at in greater detail in future issues as well.

Beginning after the September 11 attacks, The Estimate ran a series called "What Kind of War?", focusing on several aspects of the challenge faced. Readers are urged to consult that series and other coverage of the Afghan conflict in The Estimate for a fuller perspective on what follows.

To recap the remarkable speed with which the Taliban collapsed: the US began its bombing campaign on October 7, naturally enough concentrating on Taliban air defense and command-and-control capabilities. There appear to have been some initial problems involved in working with the Northern Alliance, and as a result there were few visible results in the first few weeks. As some critics were already accusing the Administration of a Vietnam-style "quagmire" — after less than a month of bombing — the US shifted its bombing campaign from the largely destroyed air defense and command infrastructure and began destroying Taliban military formations on the front lines. At that point the Northern Alliance began to move, and everything happened quickly. The "quagmire" of late October became a stunning victory in a matter of weeks in earlly November, as Mazar-i-Sharif, then Herat and Kabul itself, finally Kunduz and Kandahar fell to the anti-Taliban forces. Though pockets of resistance remain, and the new government is somewhat fragile do to its internal fractures, the Taliban have been driven from all the Afghani cities and hold on only in a few remote outposts.

The Special Operations side of the fight has remained somewhat shadowy; the US military has proudly released pictures of Special Forces and other special operators on horseback and descriptions of cavalry charges, and the role of CIA paramilitaries at the siege of the prison revolt in Mazar has been publicized, as has the role of Special Forces in pinpointing bombing targets. The US Marines' forward base at Camp Rhino south of Kandahar (and later, at Kandahar airport) was the only major deployment of US forces which has had journalists present more or less consistently.

The Geopolitical Lesson:
Mahan Trumps Mackinder
Any analysis of the war should probably begin on the broadest possible stage: that of geopolitics. One of the oldest arguments in geopolitics — some would say the foundation of the field — is the century-old competition between the Sea Power theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan and the "Geographical pivot of history" or "Eurasian heartland" of Sir Halford Mackinder. Mackinder saw the Eurasian continental mass as the "pivot" of history, and control by a continental power of the central portions or heartland of Eurasia as the key to geopolitical power. He suggested that the 20th Century would see the rise of Eurasian powers and the decline of traditional maritime powers such as Britain. Mackinder's ideas inspired others with less subtle and nuanced interpretations, including the Nazi geopolitician Karl Haushofer. Mahan, of course, was the slightly earlier apostle of sea power and its decisive influence. But Mahan at his most vigorous probably never imagined that a maritime power could project its power from the sea into Central Asia; Mackinder, whose Eurasian heartland was seen as impervious to maritime power, certainly never thought so either.

But the air operations over Afghanistan were conducted from US Navy aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean, Air Force bombers flying from Diego Garcia and other forward bases in the Middle East and from the continental United States. Special Operations forces operated from the platform of a carrier offshore. Yet Afghanistan has no coastline and is landlocked and has few navigable rivers. Britain lost two wars in Afghanistan with its Army, but never could use its vaunted Navy.

What Airpower Can and Cannot Do
But if Mahan is the winner at the geopolitical victor in the sea power versus Eurasian heartland debate, the apostles of airpower — from Giulio Douhet through Billy Mitchell to Curtis LeMay and their current-day heirs — would seem to have added another piece of evidence to their argument. But the verdict here deserves to be taken with a bit more caution: it is still the case that airpower alone did not win this war; in fact, until the Northern Alliance movements began on the ground, the critics were yelling "quagmire". Clearly, there are still limitations to the ability of airpower to win a campaign in the absence of ground forces, the unique exception of Kosovo notwithstanding.

Still, it is clear that precision-guided munitions, unmanned aerial vehicles, satellite communications and geopositioning, and massive firepower have combined to make the United States' air arms — the US Air Force, carrier-based Naval Aviation and the Marine air arm — a truly formidable offensive force against which only the most sophisticated militaries can hope to defend.

At the same time, there are limitations. Satellite guided weaponry allows bombing in weather conditions which previously would be impossible, but weather still affects the ability to do bomb damage assessment, and therefore to reschedule new missions as needed. And the accuracy achieved required spotters on the ground, despite whom there were several cases of collateral damage and at least one fatal friendly fire incident.

The Role of Special Operations Forces
By their very nature, special operations are classified, and the details of what units were involved in Afghanistan (except for those Special Forces and Ranger units which suffered casualties and have thus been identified publicly) remains uncertain at this writing. It is clear, though, that most of the US forces actually on the ground in Afghanistan were engaged in special operations of one sort or another, even including the Marines at Kandahar.

The campaign may, indeed, come to be considered a classic in the field, once full details are known. But as with many of the other "lessons learned" which seem apparent at the moment, it would be risky to extrapolate too widely from what is essentially a unique case. The special operations forces found local allies on the ground with whom they could work; they enjoyed communications and other capabilities assured in part by absolute air supremacy overhead; and they enjoyed the advantage that their enemies seem to have assumed that the US would wage a more conventional war and were unprepared for the combination of blows which in fact were delivered.

The Role of the Local Allies
The fact that the ground forces were provided, first, by the Northern Alliance, and later by Pashtun warlords in the south as well, meant that other than the Marines (who sometimes like to say that all their operations are special operations), conventional US forces were not required on the ground. That kept US casualties low, while still providing a force that was able to defeat the Taliban after US air attacks prepared the battlefield.

Advocates of the "on to Baghdad" approach are already saying that air power plus the Iraqi National Congress and the Kurds could do something similar in Iraq. Perhaps they can; but there are very clear differences.

The fighters of the Northern Alliance have, in many cases, literally been in the field for a generation. They fought the Soviets as mujahedin, and in 1992 they began to fight each other. Since 1995-96 they have been fighting the Taliban. They are a seasoned force if not a disciplined one by Western standards; they have few illusions about what war means.

They were well armed, with a hodgepodge of equipment captured during the war with the Soviets, or delivered by Pakistan or the US at that time, or acquired from their (ironically, Russian and Iranian) allies in more recent years, or via Pakistan and probably China. They had heavy equipment, ammunition, and sources of supply; in the latter case, they had a more reliable source of supply than the Taliban, who had been essentially dependent on Pakistan for their equipment.

In other words, the local allies on the ground were a real, if irregular, army; they were equipped with weapons they knew how to use; and they had a source of supply denied to their enemy. Not every surrogate opposition force on the horizon will enjoy those advantages.

And of course, there are disadvantages in any local ally. Some elements of the mujahedin were responsible for the destruction of Kabul in 1992-96, and some have human rights records not much better than the Taliban. In addition, all tend to be used to the Afghan way of fighting, which means an enemy facing defeat may well suddenly change sides; the US had to bring pressure to prevent a safe-conduct for Mullah Muhammad ‘Umar and the Taliban leadership during the siege of Kandahar, and they got out anyway.

The mujahedin government of 1992 eventually collapsed and gave way to the Taliban because its factions began fighting among themselves, largely on ethnic and religious lines. That may happen again, though the coalition transitional government agreed in Bonn is deliberately designed to prevent that. If the new interim government fails, the ex-Taliban who have faded into the countryside or joined the victors may yet be heard from again.

For all the weaknesses of the anti-Taliban forces, they were the only allies in sight when the US began the campaign, and of course they won. But the special nature of their experience and their campaign does not translate easily into other venues, because Afghanistan's modern history has not been exactly replicated anywhere else, except perhaps in a failed state like Somalia.

If the nature of the allies is unlikely to be found elsewhere, the same is true of the nature of the enemy.

The Nature of the Enemy
The Estimate noted early on that the Taliban "state" was not really a state in the usual sense. It has been sometimes said that the only ministries which really fully functioned were the Ministries of Defense and Interior and the Ministry for the Suppression of Vice and the Promotion of Virtue, the country's morals police. In short, the Taliban had the coercive instruments of control in their hands but provided little in the way of government services.

The Taliban's notorious treatment of women, the closing of schools, the mass arrests, had also clearly undermined their popularity even among many elements who supported them initially. They were a brittle regime with a fragile hold on power, perhaps more brittle and more fragile than outsiders realized at the beginning of the campaign.

Even more importantly, the Taliban had been essentially hijacked by Usama bin Ladin and his Al-Qa‘ida, to the point that their power depended increasingly on a foreign legion of Arabs and Pakistanis, Chechens and Kashmiris and various Balkan volunteers, who appear to have been distinctly unpopular with the Afghanis. This was also a (probably nonreproducible) advantage to the US: by keeping its own presence low-profile on the ground, traditional Afghan xenophobia was directed not at the US as a foreign intruder but at the foreign forces fighting for the Taliban.

Afghanistan was a failed state already when the war began, one which had been essentially taken over by Bin Ladin's forces, and one which was already engaged in a civil war, albeit one which had been rather static for several years. That exact admixture is not going to be found in any other possible target country in the war on terrorism, except possibly for Somalia. Many suspect that for that very reason, Somalia will be the next target: because, as the phrase goes, it is "low-hanging fruit", easily plucked.

That may be so, but Somalia has other memories for the US; the 1993 firefight with US Special Operations Forces which produced the book and soon the movie Black Hawk Down and led to US withdrawal has been called the longest sustained firefight involving US troops since Vietnam. It was an urban firefight as well, in which air power has severe limitations. Admittedly, the present US Administration is not as sensitive, apparently, to the question of US casualties as was the case in 1993, in part because the US public sees the present fight as a response to the attacks on New York and Washington and does not question the need to fight.

But the fact that in Afghanistan the US took more casualties from friendly fire than from enemy fire may mislead American public opinion into believing that the next stage of the war on terrorism will be as bloodless (for Americans) as this one was. There are few guarantees of that; in fact it seems unlikely.

If the US is intent on going after "state sponsors of terrorism", as it says, it will at some point face a real state rather than a failed state, like Afghanistan. And that will be a different sort of war.

Lessons Learned and Not to Be Learned
The lessons described above may be summarized as falling into two categories: those worth learning about the next war and those which were unique to Afghanistan and should not be applied to other campaigns. The war may be over operationally, but its primary objective — capture or destruction of Usama bin Ladin and the Al-Qa‘ida senior leadership — has not in fact yet been achieved. Wherever the chase leads next, or whatever area the US chooses to target in its continuing effort to dismantle the international network of Al-Qa‘ida, planners need to keep in mind that there will be no easy repetition of some of aspects of the Afghani campaign, because there is no replication of some of the special circumstances which made that campaign possible.

Part II of this Dossier, in the first issue of 2002, will look at some possible scenarios.

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