Easy victories are reviving America's taste for fight

Success of caution and bombs restores Pentagon confidence
They are not planning the victory parade down Broadway just yet. War aim number one - capturing Osama bin Laden - has not been achieved. But the misgivings of a month ago have given way to an air-punching feeling of vindication in the Pentagon.

US forces and their allies control all Afghanistan's main towns. The Taliban have melted away. Kandahar in the south-east, the spiritual home of the Taliban revolution, has surrendered, and marines have a base in this Pashtun heartland.

The contrast with the military situation in early November could not be more striking. Then, the Afghan militia and its allies - the mainly foreign fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organisation - gave every appearance of being undaunted by a month of heavy bombing.

Critics in London and Washington, most pointedly inside the Pentagon itself, were sniping at the operational commander, General Tommy Franks. He was too stolid, his reliance on air power outdated, the mostly anonymous critics said.

Those voices have now fallen quiet. Caution and bombs seem to have worked. There could be bloody ambushes in the mountains in the coming weeks, but the four US casualties so far have come from accidents, a prison riot and friendly fire. As in Kosovo two years ago, the bodybag syndrome feared by US military planners and politicians since Vietnam has been avoided.

The ease of the battlefield successes so far will undoubtedly stoke enthusiasm for future military ventures, most military analysts agree, but there is much less accord over whether such confidence is justified by the lessons of Afghanistan.

One school of thought depicts General Franks's campaign as a well thought out linear progression from the first air strikes on October 7 to the surrender of Kandahar. Important strategic gains were made in the first few weeks that were not visible to the carping armchair generals.

"The first month of bombing was much more lethal and effective then a lot of nay-sayers expected," argued retired Rear Ad miral Stephen Baker. "The enemy forces could not communicate with each other, they could not re-supply, they could not move." The Taliban were hollowed out from the inside, this interpretation runs, and so when the Northern Alliance knocked on the door of Mazar-i-Sherif and Kabul, the militia simply collapsed. Air power won the day.

Sceptics point out the path to victory was not quite so smooth. The initial attempt to foment revolt within Pashtun ranks failed, and this "southern strategy" reached its lowest point when Washing ton's best hope as an alternative southern leader, Abdul Haq, was captured and hung by the Taliban on October 26.

In London, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of the defence staff, was telling journalists: "It is not likely, in my personal view, that the Taliban will give up."

Strategy switch

Winter was coming, civilian casualties were on the rise, and TV pictures of the bombing were threatening the broad coalition which the US and Britain - and notably Tony Blair and the US secretary of state, Colin Powell - had built. Washington was impatient.

This wobble brought a switch in strategy. Rather than hold the Northern Alliance back from Kabul for political reasons, the US threw its full weight behind the opposition fighters attacking Taliban forces north of the capital, and then further north, including at Mazar-i-Sharif.

Special forces were sent to alliance front lines to help direct withering B-52 bombing raids on Taliban front lines, backed up by low-flying C-130 gunships, and transport planes dropping 14,000lb "daisy-cut ter" bombs the size of lorries. By November 2, air strikes against front line targets accounted for 80% of missions flown.

The US "prepared for a long campaign but, because they were very frustrated, they escalated militarily", Nigel Vinson of the Royal United Services Institute, said.

And the Northern Alliance, for all its internal divisions, did "a very good job of taking advantage of the air campaign", said Theresa Hitchens, at Washington's Centre for Defence Information. "Politically, we didn't want to go there, but militarily we had no choice."

John Pike, a military analyst at, an online intelligence newsletter, said: "The first preference would have been for Pashtun groups to be in Kabul rather than the Northern Alliance but the cookie didn't crumble that way."

The politicians have been left to sort out the legacy of this strategic choice, but militarily the success of the "northern strategy" was stunning; as the bombing increased, so did Taliban defections.

"Defections were a critical factor," said Michael Clarke, director of the centre for defence studies at King's College, London. as was the psychological effect of bombs.

Allies on the ground - proxy fighters, - were also vital: Afghans were the foot soldiers. The conflict was also suited in the end to special forces. They are sure to have a role elsewhere in the war on terror.

This was a war the US prosecuted with support from Britain and others, and help from Pakistan, but without any Nato involvement. The Kosovo conflict two years ago made Washington wary of fighting wars "by committee".

The lessons of the Afghan campaign could profoundly influence the conduct of warfare for years to come. The role of bombing seems secure. And the US may be emboldened to take on new military challenges in the believe that substantial casualties on its side can be avoided.There is no doubt, that the US public, administration and military establishment are, barring an endgame disaster in Afghanistan, considerably emboldened to look for a new adversary.

Americans will start to "believe there is an instant formula for regime change", Mr Pike said, "you add air power and microwave for three minutes and hey, presto, you've got a new regime."

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