We must not let this war drag on

AS American and British military chiefs ponder their next move today, one stark truth is already becoming clear. This war may well have proved easier to start than it will be to win.

Two successive nights of air strikes against targets in Afghanistan may have helped slake the immediate American thirst for action. But apart from damaging a few airfields, terrorist camps and military command and control installations, the strikes will have done little except harden Taliban resolve.

So what do the combined forces of Britain and America, with the support of the fragile coalition that has been laboriously built up over the past few weeks, do next?

Further missile attacks would serve little purpose, believes retired Major General Murray Naylor, former officer in command of the Army's North East District based in York, and now a North Yorkshire County Councillor.

All targets worth attacking in Afghanistan will already have been hit in the first waves of strikes, he believes - and Osama bin Laden and senior Taliban leaders will probably already be holed up in caves were they are beyond the reach of missiles.

So already, three days into the war, it may be time to move to the next stage.

"Cruise missiles and bombs don't win wars," Mr Naylor says. "To win wars you have to hold the ground. Ultimately, somebody has got to go in."

But 'going in' into a land as remote, hostile and inhospitable as Afghanistan is no easy task. A full scale, cross-border invasion by western ground troops is simply not realistic, Mr Naylor believes.

The track record of success against the notoriously fierce Afghans in their own country - whether the British in the days of Empire or more recently the Soviets - is not one to fill military strategists with confidence, Mr Naylor points out. The Americans, with the experience of the Vietnam War still seared into their collective consciousness, may not have the stomach for another all-out war on foreign soil. Added to that is the simple truth that no western power would really want to be responsible for taking over the running of the devastated country in the event of victory.

The biggest argument against sending in ground troops, however, would be the scale of the operation required.

"The sheer inhospitality of the region means there is very little there, other than desert and mountains," he says.

"The number of troops it would take would be enormous, and you would have to build up an enormous level of logistical support.

"Ammunition, food, fuel, some form of pre-fabricated buildings, equipment needed for road building and temporary airstrips, earth moving equipment - you'd have to have all of that, and it would increase all the time."

That logistical support would need to be built up before any attack across the borders were launched - either in Pakistan or in one of the former Soviet satellite states to the north. This would take several months. And Pakistan at least, where support for the military action against its neighbours remains fragile and where police have already clashed with anti-American protesters, would be unlikely to tolerate such a vast military base on its soil.

With an invasion unlikely it is also unlikely that the British soldiers now on exercise in Oman - some of them from York - will be called into the front line. They are not, anyway, equipped for the kind of war which would need to be fought on Afghan terrain, Mr Naylor believes.

That will be a crumb of comfort to their families now anxiously watching developments back home. But with further missile attacks largely purposeless, and a full-scale invasion almost impossible, what options are left to the commanders on the ground?

Mr Naylor believes that the most likely option will be to support Afghanistan's opposition Northern Alliance fighters in their ongoing struggle against the Taliban.

American and British forces could air-drop weapons and ammunition to them, and even parachute in special forces to act as 'military advisers', he says, which would mean the Afghan opposition forces themselves could be used to defeat the Taliban on the ground.

He believes that will be the next step - supporting a Northern Alliance push to drive the Taliban from Kabul.

"To capture the capital would be a major boost," he says, "and it could be followed by military moves to spread influence across the rest of the country."

Joining forces with the Northern Alliance has its drawbacks, of course - not least that all the evidence indicates they are probably little better than the Taliban themselves. But it may be a way of achieving the military aims.

Any military effort, Mr Naylor believes, must however be matched by a parallel effort - what he calls a 'hearts and minds' campaign to win over opinion by air-dropping in food and supplies to help the starving Afghan people survive the winter.

Such a campaign may have limited military value, he admits - it won't make the ordinary Afghans love America or Britain overnight, and at best would be likely to make them neutral in any on-going internal war.

"But our argument is not with the majority of the Afghan people," he says. "We've got to do something to try to alleviate the appalling hardship that the ordinary people of Afghanistan are suffering and will continue to suffer."

Whatever we do, Mr Naylor believes, we have to do it quickly.

He says this is a war that we cannot allow to drag on.

American public opinion won't permit it - and the longer it does drag on, the more fragile the international coalition in support of action will become.

But neither is it a war the West can afford to lose, he says. The minimum acceptable result from the American people's point of view, he believes, will be the toppling of the Taliban, and its replacement by a more 'acceptable' government.

But unless bin Laden himself can be brought to justice, he fears, the West will never be free of the fear of more terrorist outrages.

"As long as he remains at large he will be the focus for more acts of terrorism against the western world," says Mr Naylor.

Mr Naylor gives western military leaders two months to achieve a significant breakthrough.

Then, he believes, they will need a fall-back option. But what fall-back plan, if it proves impossible to oust the Taliban from Kabul with the help of the northern rebels? He can't say at this stage. "But I think circumstances will very quickly identify what it is."

He admits he is ambivalent about the prospects of final success. The political willpower is there, and the military might. "My one area of concern is whether the US military can deliver on the ground.

"They are getting into something that is going to put enormous pressure on the local leadership in a very hostile part of the world.

"Whether they have really thought through all the consequences of what they are getting into, I don't know."

It is a question much of the western world is asking itself today.

Updated: 10:52 Tuesday, October 09, 2001