<

Tribal Mix is the Key, Not Military Might
Thursday, September 20, 2001

Daily Telegraph
The key for the United States to defeat the Taliban will lie more in the ability to manipulate Afghanistan's complex ethnic balance than in sheer military might.

Experts believe that breaking up the Taliban infrastructure depends, in large measure, on offering a credible plan to install a new government that can win legitimacy across a country that has been torn apart by war for more than two decades.

There are likely to be widespread defections from the Taliban military and political structure once any US-led multinational force begins military action inside Afghanistan.

Taliban ministers in Kabul are already sending their families to Pakistan, joining the tens of thousands of people evacuating major cities.

They know that the Taliban do not have the firepower to match the US. The Taliban's heavy weapons - 200 tanks, heavy artillery, 30 helicopters and 12 fighter bombers - are Sixties vintage equipment from the former Soviet Union and are likely to be destroyed within a few days of an attack.

The Taliban's more lethal weapons, a few Soviet-built Scud missiles and US Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, are so old that they may not work.

The hardcore fighters in the 35,000 to 40,000-strong Taliban army and many of the 3,000 Arab fighters under Osama bin Laden's command will follow the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar's orders to fight to the death.

But many are likely to desert and go home. Since its inception seven years ago, the Taliban have been a movement rather than a political party.

They have expanded their support by absorbing, coercing or bribing local warlords who could defect once the Taliban's grip on power is weakened.

Afghanistan's 22 million people are a complex mosaic of ethnic groups. The Hindu Kush mountains north of Kabul are also an ethnic dividing line. In the north live Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmen and Hazaras who, over centuries, have travelled south from Central Asia.
(More: Daily Telegraph News Source)

Dan