By DAVID DICKENS*
The balance of power has changed much more quickly than armchair strategists expected in Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance's small army has swept forward capturing Kabul, Mazer-i-Sharif, Herat and Jalalabad.
Why is the Taleban collapsing?
The Taleban were heavy-handed rulers who ignored local forms of political organisation. Pre-Taleban towns and cities were governed by secular administrative processes. Under the Taleban, competent administrators and local politicians were displaced by poorly educated Islamic fundamentalists whose judgment was as impractical as it was self-defeating.
Rural Afghanistan was governed by village councils controlled by elders who talked issues through and reached decision by consensus. These councils were ignored and repressed by the Taleban. After five years of total control, the Taleban had alienated themselves from local support.
The Taleban's arrogance and cruelty rivals that of Nazi invaders of Eastern Europe in the Second World War and, more recently, of ethnic repressors in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Further, the Taleban military failed to adapt to the tactics of the Northern Alliance assisted by coalition air power.
The Taleban used their superior firepower and infantry mobility to force the disparate groups who now make up the Northern Alliance into retreat five years ago. They then built a simple but effective system of entrenched defences to contain the Alliance.
They used their small combat air force and armoured reserves to stop dead attempted breakouts. However, behind the scenes the Northern Alliance was retraining its leaders, re-equipping with new Russian armoured vehicles and building up its stocks of ammunition for its Soviet-era artillery.
September 11 accelerated this trend. The Northern Alliance immediately and enthusiastically accepted the offer of coalition special forces specialists to provide technical advice on planning, coordination, tactics, training and logistics.
The key factor in the Taleban's demise, as military historian John Keegan said in the Daily Telegraph, is air power. The Taleban have not been able to work out tactics to counter the precision bombing that destroyed its air force, air defence system, command and control, ammunition and fuel supplies, armoured vehicles and artillery.
They were caught in a dilemma. They needed to concentrate their forces on the ground to hold and reinforce the line against the Northern Alliance. Yet the concentration of troops on the ground made them easy targets for air power.
Trenches, tanks, artillery, ammunition and stores depots and so on are visible to the satellites, unarmed flying vehicles and target detection aircraft and patrolling fighters. Infantry dug in to pits and trench systems for protection from Northern Alliance artillery are especially visible.
The B-52 strikes near the lines of the Taleban that featured on television until a few days ago were most likely aimed at these infantry. Every attack would have killed a few soldiers and more importantly demoralised those remaining. This will have rendered the fighting capacity of defending units worthless.
It was simply a matter of time before the Northern Alliance pushed forward, no doubt closely and accurately advised by the United States-led coalition of the condition of the Taleban troops on the ground. It is doubtful that they would have met much resistance.
If the Taleban tried a last stand or to concentrate forces to counterattack, they would have made themselves vulnerable to attack from the air. If they did nothing, they gave away control of the ground.
The military question facing the Northern Alliance's military leaders is whether the breakout and pursuit of the Taleban should continue at full pace or whether they should consolidate before winter arrives in a few weeks.
They also face the problem of overstretching their small army. Winter will complicate the capacity of the Alliance to use its vehicles and to sustain its troops in good fighting condition.
Winter will have the same effect on the Taleban, who say they have made a strategic withdrawal to regroup before launching a campaign to retake control of lost territory.
Perhaps the Taleban calculate that the wave of popular support that swept the Islamic world after September 11 will collapse from within states such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Available evidence does not support this judgment.
All three states operate effective authoritarian forms of state control. More to the point, the Taleban look to be on the run and have lost much credibility.
But perhaps mostly importantly, the evidence of what appears to have been a horrible form of repression may turn Islamic opinion against the Taleban. This evidence could well turn Arab opinion in favour of a multinational peacekeeping and emergency transitional mission that includes sizeable numbers of Western, along with Islamic and non-aligned, troops and administrators.
The Taleban may be counting on winter not just to contain the Northern Alliance but to give their tired and now frightened soldiers respite from attack from the air. However, coalition special forces can operate in snow and arctic conditions as cold as -40 deg C. They can traverse ground that will be impassable to the poorly equipped Taleban, especially if they try to hold the ground.
Working at night, with night-vision gear, these special force soldiers will force the Taleban to defend against an enemy they cannot see. If the Taleban decide to concentrate their troops for mutual protection, they will be destroyed from the air. If they decide to deconcentrate their infantry and patrol by day and night, they will be destroyed and harassed by special forces on the ground or in small, silent helicopters.
In the months to come, it seems likely that at least some Taleban commanders, and their rank and file, will question whether it is worth defending these arrogant foreigners who make up al Qaeda and who have brought so much misery.
The Taleban's decision to give al Qaeda sanctuary has backfired.
* Dr David Dickens is the director of Victoria University's centre for strategic studies.
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
<i>Dialogue:</i> Taleban undone by war in the air
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