The real war on terrorism starts only after the bombing ends.
The airstrikes, which could continue for another few days, are mainly designed to secure Afghan skies. U.S. military planners also hope the pounding will rout suspected terrorists from their hiding places — much like stirring up an anthill — and spark defections from the ruling Taliban militia. Small units of U.S. commandos are probably already inside Afghanistan, trying to buy or bully information on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts.
Once the skies are secured and the United States has better intelligence in hand, additional American commandos will be ferried into Afghanistan by helicopter to hunt down bin Laden and his top aides, U.S. defense officials said.
The White House, perhaps acknowledging that capturing and killing bin Laden himself is a long shot, has been playing down that goal — stressing that its real aim is crushing his al-Qaida network. To ensure that the group doesn't spring up again, the United States will have to find a way to replace the Taliban with a government not only friendly to the U.S. but also strong enough to control its own territory. "What we need to guard against is leaving Afghanistan with another vacuum," said Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
The United States also will have to constantly balance its military aims against the political needs of nervous leaders across the Muslim world. To root out al-Qaida's far-flung cells, the United States will have to rely on these governments to fight their own domestic wars on terrorism — and continue to wage them long after the bombing in Afghanistan ends.
The first day of the air war brought some anti-American rioting in both Pakistan and Palestinian-controlled areas of the Gaza Strip. But otherwise, reaction was wary and muted.
Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, and Jordan expressed support for the attacks, but not without reservation. Saudi Arabia remained silent. In a precautionary measure, U.S. diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain closed their doors to the public yesterday.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's military ruler, assured the world that there was no serious opposition within his country to his pro-American policy. But despite those assurances, protesters rampaged through three cities in Pakistan to vent their anger at the attacks. Pakistani police fired on demonstrators, and one person was killed in the unrest.
In Gaza City, Palestinian authorities tried to put down anti-American protest, rather than foment it. Palestinian police shot dead two demonstrators and wounded at least 40 others, as students from the Islamic University demonstrated in support of Mr. bin Laden.
While the war was just one day old, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld gave Americans a taste of how long it might last, likening the struggle to the Cold War, a battle that dragged on for 50 years and even then wasn't won with military might. Others have compared the current struggle to the "war on drugs," an effort demanding constant vigilance and tactical aggressiveness but rarely offering lasting victories.
Officials said they were still in the early stages of analyzing intelligence data — gleaned from U-2 spy planes and unmanned surveillance aircraft — to see how successful the first raids had been.
With each wave of bombing, U.S. spy satellites and planes are scouring the ground for enemy movement and the air for radio or satellite-phone communication that might give away Taliban or al-Qaida hideouts.
Throughout the first two days of the campaign, U.S. forces have met little fire from the ground, and what they did see was mostly anti-aircraft-artillery fire that is ineffectual against bombers and fighter jets flying above 15,000 feet. Pentagon officials said it was too early to know whether the Taliban were still holding surface-to-air missiles in reserve or whether their aging equipment simply doesn't work.
With a nervous eye on the Islamic world, the U.S. wants to avoid civilian casualties or adding to the misery of the Afghan people. U.S. and British officials said they aren't targeting what little civilian infrastructure remains in a country shattered by two decades of war. Rumsfeld said that in the bombing of one airport, which he didn't identify, only the military side of the field had been hit.
There are few journalists inside the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan, and news from the ground is sparse. But the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television network, which said the Taliban had placed restrictions on its filming, showed limited damage to the capital of Kabul. The damage included a wrecked mud-brick house and a two-story building with shattered windows. The report said electricity was back on in the city Tuesday, and shops were opening as usual. Al-Jazeera showed pictures of poor workers lining up in the streets, looking for jobs.
Once the Taliban's headquarters and air defenses have been destroyed, the focus of the attacks will shift to more-elusive military targets, such as groups of soldiers and mobile command-and-control headquarters, U.S. defense officials said.
In this phase, air power alone won't be enough. And the United States will have to rely heavily on commandos, ferried in low-flying helicopters. Their job will be to track down moving groups of enemy fighters and use laser pointers to help guide bombs to their targets. When the conflict reaches this stage, the broader bombing campaign could slow or completely halt, with more strikes ordered only if the Taliban forces regroup or bring out hidden anti-aircraft batteries.
Similarly, high-flying bombers can only achieve limited success against bin Laden's al Qaeda network. In the first two nights, U.S. planes have hit suspected terrorist training camps, according to American officials, but most of the camps are believed to be long deserted. U.S. military planners are hoping the strikes have taken out weapons caches and flushed out al Qaeda members, making it difficult for them to regroup.
Still, the most-significant action against al Qaeda probably will involve small commando units sent in to capture or kill bin Laden and his key lieutenants, U.S. officials have said.
"These (air) raids are one small part of the entire effort," Rumsfeld said Tuesday. "The cruise missiles and bombers are not going to solve this problem. We know that. What they can do is to contribute by adding pressure and making life more difficult for the terrorists."
U.S. officials have said they don't intend to launch a large-scale invasion of Afghanistan or occupy the country. But they are hoping that bombing will weaken the Taliban enough to allow its many internal foes to finish the job.
Whether the disparate opposition groups can join together and stay together is far from certain. The Northern Alliance has amassed forces to the north and northwest of Kabul, mostly made up of fighters from the minority Tajik and Hazara tribes. The Taliban draws the vast majority of its support from the Pashtun tribes, which make up around 40 percent of Afghanistan's population.
The primary focus of the U.S. strategy, administration officials have said, is to get Pashtuns now loyal to the Taliban to break away or to persuade other groups of Pashtuns in the south to rise up in an armed insurrection.
The Northern Alliance shares this hope but has said that an attack from the south probably won't happen unless the Taliban begins to break apart and the U.S. and others can gets arms into the southern provinces."The Taliban was very successful in pacifying and disarming the Pashtun areas. For them to rise up, they need to be armed," said the alliance's Washington representative, Haron Amin.
Amin said the alliance is preparing to take the offensive across northern Afghanistan once the U.S. bombing campaign slackens off in the next couple of days. The alliance has notified both the U.S. government and the United Nations that it won't attempt to take Kabul but will concentrate on trying to capture important cities near the borders of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Amin said.
"The real problem is forming a post-Taliban government, which is something that cannot be done by force by any one group," said Amin. "It must be representative of all groups or it won't work."