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Welcome to USAGOLD's "Gilded
Opinion" pages.
We invite you to browse our index
of outstanding gold-based commentary.
(Back to Holger Jensen Index)
While we find Mr. Jensen's columns particularly informative with respect to foreign affairs, his opinions do not necessarily represent those of Centennial Precious Metals, USAGOLD, its management and clientele.
INSIDE FOREIGN AFFAIRS
U.S. won't evade fallout
by waging 'proxy wars'
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has confirmed that the next phase of President Bush's war on terrorism will not be fought as openly -- at least by American forces -- as it was in Afghanistan.
The United States will provide intelligence, training, arms and healthy dollops of economic aid to induce other countries to "take steps internally," Rumsfeld told reporters last week, meaning no deployment of U.S. ground troops or even air support beyond reconnaissance flights.
This does not exclude the possibility of Special Forces being stationed in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, the Philippines, Indonesia and Pakistan to conduct training, relay intelligence and, at times, accompany local soldiers on specific anti-terrorist missions as "advisers" or "observers."
It is widely rumored, for example, that Green Berets were with a U.S.-trained and U.S.-armed Yemeni army unit that staged a successful attack on the Aden Abyan Islamic Army, a terrorist group linked to Osama bin Laden.
An advance party of U.S. military officers also visited Somalia recently to investigate what the State Department calls "an environment hospitable to terrorists." The country has had no viable government for a decade and is home to al-Itihad al-Islamiya, a Muslim group that President Bush put on his list of terrorist organizations last year.
In the Philippines, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo politely refused Bush's offer of American troops to help rid her country of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group. But she eagerly accepted a C-130 military transport plane, helicopter gunships, a Navy patrol boat, armored personnel carriers and 30,000 M-16 rifles.
Showered with U.S. military assistance, trade subsidies and pledges of private-sector investment, a beaming Arroyo described her November visit to Washington as "$4 billion and counting."
Proxy wars may be expensive but they are not nearly as expensive as sending U.S. expeditionary forces abroad. Their other advantage, of course, is that no Americans come home in body bags.
But they do have disadvantages.
In Somalia, for example, warlords opposed to a shaky transitional government accuse it of sheltering terrorists. U.S. concerns that some of bin Laden's followers, or even bin Laden himself, may try to seek sanctuary there could prompt Washington to form an alliance with those warlords, even though their claims may be spurious.
That would put the United States against a government recognized by the United Nations, the Organization of African Unity, the Arab League and Organization of the Islamic Conference. It would also wreck U.N. efforts to stabilize Somalia and get rid of the militia chiefs who flourish in the anarchy of civil war.
Warns one official familiar with Somalia: "The new game in town is to call your enemy a terrorist and hope that America will destroy him for you. Don't fall for it."
The Afghan war against Soviet occupation was a proxy war in that the mujahideen were armed and trained by the CIA in cooperation with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. After the Russians left, those selfsame "freedom fighters" turned their U.S. supplied weapons on each other in a civil war that brought the Taliban to power.
Many former mujahideen also turned on their American benefactors by joining bin Laden's al-Qaida network. And we never did get our Stinger missiles back.
The latest Afghan campaign is not a proxy war, in the true sense of the word, because we have troops on the ground and an armada of warplanes supporting the anti-Taliban northern alliance. But we let our Afghan allies do most of the fighting.
Saturation bombing helped them oust the Taliban in record time. But relying on them to capture its leaders and top-level terrorists in bin Laden's network proved to be a mistake. Having won the war, northern alliance commanders reverted to the Afghan tradition of allowing opponents to switch sides or buy their way to freedom.
The going rate is $3,000, though some of bin Laden's top lieutenants reportedly paid $75,000.
Although the Taliban and al-Qaida had up to 40,000 fighters, only 307 prisoners have been turned over to U.S. forces and only two are high-ranking. At least 38 others on Washington's most wanted list, including bin Laden and the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, are still at large.
January 8, 2002
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 The E.W. Scripps Co. All Rights Reserved.
Reprinted by USAGOLD with permission of Mr. Jensen. No further reproduction without permission.
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