A-130 to change war focus

As the US and British campaign in Afghanistan moves into its second phase, political considerations, coalition-building and the desire to make the Afghanis the instruments of their own liberation are shaping the slowly emerging strategy.

The use for the first time on Monday of the low-flying lumbering propeller-driven A-130 gunship reflects the total domination of the Afghan airspace by the US and British and their new emphasis on direct attacks on troop concentrations.

The plane has a 180 mm Howitzer and several Gatling machine guns capable of 1,800 rounds a minute and putting down a withering carpet of fire.

Although the A-130 has been associated with Special Forces contingents, its use does not necessarily mean that ground troops will be involved in large numbers soon. While there are undoubtedly small groups of such troops on the ground on both sides of the lines, the Administration has made it clear that it would prefer the direct engagement of Taliban forces to be undertaken by local opposition troops.

The US role at this stage is to soften up Taliban defences from the air. That has reportedly already allowed the Northern Alliance to threaten the strategically important northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif.

The US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, aware that winter is looming, has encouraged opposition forces to take advantage of such opportunities. He has also made clear at a press briefing on Monday that any restraint shown by the US in declining to bomb the front lines defending Kabul was likely to disappear shortly. "In the period ahead that's not going to be a very safe place," he said.

He claimed that any delay in attacking those defences was largely attributed to targeting problems that had now been substantially resolved by improved communications with various sources of information on the ground.

In Washington the speculation had been, however, that such restraint had been linked to the slowness of the diplomatic offensive, which aims to build a broad-based post-Taliban coalition to run the country. The US is concerned that the Northern Alliance might pre-empt any such coalition by seizing the capital. The Alliance's promise on Sunday to delay that process may have contributed to Mr Rumsfeld's comments.

US sources have expressed some frustration at the difficulties involved in putting that coaliition together. Even within groups like those surrounding King Mohammed Zahir Shah there are rival factions vying for influence in a new regime, while the various groups find it difficult to talk to each other.

The visit to Pakistan and India of the US Secretray of State, Mr Colin Powell, and the appointment of Ambassador Richard Haass, the head of policy planning at the State Department, to the task of co-ordinating the coalition talks mark the seriousness with which the matter is regarded.

The Administration is still adamant that it does not see itself as involved in "nation-building" in Afghanistan. It is anxious that any coalition which emerges will be seen as representative to some extent of Afghan opinion and not simply as a puppet of the US. The Administration is also anxious that the US will not become embroiled in a prolonged military role in the country.

Hence, President Bush's call on Thursday last for a UN peacekeeping role in stabilising the country after the war, a call echoed on Monday by both the king and the Northern Alliance. The king warned the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, of the danger of a "power vacuum" if the Taliban regime implodes fast, a suggestion that he has not as yet developed huge confidence in the coalition-building process.

While the US Administration has united behind the current phase of the campaign, there remain profound differences in the longer term over whether the war must be extended to take in such sponsors of terrorism as Iraq. The internal truce between Mr Powell and the Deputy Secretary of Defence, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, the most public of the hawks, is holding in public.

But their supporters are fighting out a proxy war in the media with the Powell camp releasing a few days ago a letter from some 28 former Middle East and South Asia US ambassadors urging the US to continue working with Arab and Muslim countries and to limit the war objectives to taking out those implicated directly in the September 11th events.

To date no hard evidence has been produced to indict Saddam Hussein, but the anthrax scares have allowed commentators to speculate that the technology involved is such that a state must have been involved. Iraq is, they argue, the likely culprit.

Mr Powell's deputy, Mr Richard Armitage, said on Sunday that any decision to go after terrorist groups in other countries "would be a matter for the coalition to discuss among themselves". It is a somewhat rose-tinted view of the democratic nature of the coalition but a useful warning shot across the bow of his hawkish colleagues.

In the wake of the defeat of the Taliban it is likely there will be calls from the hawks for renewed demands to be made on President Saddam Hussein. They will call for inspections of his weapons of mass destruction. At that stage the "let's finish them once and for all" lobby will face a serious showdown with the global coalition-builders. And President Bush will face a real choice.

psmyth@irish-times.ie .