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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
Long-term effects of war
against terrorism are still over horizon
by Holger Jensen, International Editor
"Terrorists," said President Bush, "will remember Sept. 11 as the day their reckoning began."
So how effective has it been?
In purely military terms, Operation Enduring Freedom is a resounding victory. Although the war in Afghanistan is far from over, the Taliban government has been toppled, al-Qaida has lost its Afghan bases and an interim government friendly to the United States has been installed.
About 4,000 Taliban troops have been killed, including 800 or so of al-Qaida's "Afghan Arabs." On the allied side, less than 600 northern alliance troops were killed and there were only a few U.S. combat deaths.
About 7,000 Taliban and foreign troops were taken prisoner, of whom 500 or so have been transferred to U.S custody at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. But, of three dozen Taliban and al-Qaida leaders on the Pentagon's most wanted list, only 12 were killed, injured or defected.
Most of the top leadership, including the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar and al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, are believed to have survived the war and eluded capture. Which leads the Project on Defense Alternatives, a think tank based in Cambridge, Mass., to conclude that there is a considerable gap "between the clarity of battlefield victory and the uncertainty of what it has wrought. Even the net effect of the victory on the new terrorism is uncertain."
Carl Conetta, who wrote a critical appraisal of Operation Enduring Freedom for the PDA, noted that while the Taliban are fragmented as a political force and widely discredited as an ideological movement many of its veterans "are likely to re-assume a role in the Afghan polity -- some as provincial insurgents, others as members or even leaders of other formations."
Likewise, the loss of al-Qaida's Afghan bases has only reduced its ability to commit "horrific acts" by about 30 percent, according to FBI estimates. As Conetta pointed out, "most of the organization's capabilities to conduct far reaching terrorist acts resides outside Afghanistan and thus fell beyond the scope of Operation Enduring Freedom."
Afghanistan itself is less stable now than before the war. There has been a revival of warlordism, banditry and opium production. The new pro-American government does not have full control of the country and many of the warlords responsible for the murderous chaos that helped bring the Taliban to power have resumed positions of authority.
Looking beyond Afghanistan, the war had a contagious effect on South Asia and the Middle East. India and Pakistan veered closer to hostilities over Kashmir and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians intensified to the point where President Bush finally realized it could undermine his global coalition against terror. Hence, a return to more active U.S. diplomacy there.
But growing anti-American sentiment complicates the tasks of Vice President Dick Cheney, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and other envoys who may follow them.
Not only U.S. support of Israel but the bombing of Afghanistan, which killed some 1,300 civilians, has fueled perceptions in the Arab and Muslim world that the United States is doing precisely what the Bush administration says it isn't: waging war on Islam.
Muslims are quick to point out that most, if not all, present and future targets of a broader war on terrorism mentioned by administration officials over the past six months -- in Georgia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen -- are Islamic.
Bush has made it clear he will carry the fight to other nations with the goal of denying terrorists any safe haven -- "not even a safe place to sleep." And he acknowledged that will require "international cooperation on a number of fronts, diplomatic financial and military."
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has criticized Bush for making the war on terrorism too open-ended. But an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday showed that 88 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the war in Afghanistan and 72 percent believe the effort should be extended to other parts of the world.
European governments, increasingly dismayed by what they perceive to be Bush's unilateralism, were somewhat reassured by the closing line of his speech in Washington. Instead of ending with his standard "God bless America," the president said: "God bless our coalition."
March 12, 2002
Send your questions to international editor Holger Jensen, who will answer one each day. E-mail: hjens@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 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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