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The reason for the collapse is pretty clear now. It was because the bombing had become intolerable. There are reports of as many as 10,000 dead, mostly soldiers, in the Kandahar area as a result of the bombing. With a concentration of the zone of conflict, the US air assets could concentrate mostly on the Kandahar area, and the ferocity achieved new levels. Mullah Omar urged his troops to "fight to the death" but while they were dying, they weren't being given any opportunity to fight. The friendlies mostly stayed out of range and moved into power vacuums and in any case were fellow Muslims, and the Americans were nowhere to be seen, except straight up in their damnable aircraft. For warriors, this was the worst of all possible worlds: to die, to be slaughtered in droves, with no chance at all to fight back. And it only looked to continue that way and get worse. Eventually morale cracked and the troops demanded a change in the situation. The Taliban were running out of men but the Americans didn't seem to be running out of bombs. If that 10,000 figure is correct, it may well represent half the force which was defending Kandahar. From the point of view of the Afghan/Muslim warrior ethic, the situation had become untenable. What will happen next is two things. A lot of the escapees will try to make their way to Pakistan. But that is quite a forlorn hope. The distance to be moved is considerable, all the locals along the way will be against them, and the Americans will be watching with satellites and UAVs and will bomb hell out of anything seen to be moving in that direction. And between Kandahar and the Pakistani border, there are also US Marines with orders to stop all such movement. And if they get to the border, the Pakistani Army is deployed there in strength. Other Taliban and al Qaeda troops will go into the hills and try to reorganize there in strength, with the intent to start a guerrilla action. The experience with Tora Bora speaks against the possibility for success here; it was by all accounts the best and most defensible remote position they had and it too has now fallen, again primarily because of bombing. But smaller groups are harder to find, and they may just turn into roving bands. They will have no foreign help and over a period of months or years will wither away from combat casualties, desertion, starvation and old age. To support themselves they may take to banditry. There will be low grade warfare for years with Afghan troops and American air support taking care of pockets of resistance as they're discovered. It's unlikely that this will be done by Navy jets; it's too expensive to keep a carrier there indefinitely. Instead there will be a force of American land-based aircraft either based in Afghanistan itself or more likely in a neighboring nation. My best guess is that it will be in Uzbekistan. Having it be based in a neighboring nation has several advantages: it reduces the possibility of Afghan xenophobia eventually turning on the American forces and coming to view them as foreign occupiers, and it means that the base itself will be in more secure and ordered surroundings and will be easier to supply. In the mean time, the situation keeps us from having to deal with issues such as the Afghans themselves offering amnesty to Omar. He's on the run and even the Afghans now want him dead because he no longer has anything to offer in a deal. He's a hunted man. (If we haven't already, we may put a price on his head, too.) For everyone involved, except him, the best outcome is for him to die violently, and his chance of that just went way up. (discuss) |
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