The War Against Terrorism - Part 2 - 1st Phase Of The Confrontation - The Short Term.

In the weeks after the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon buildings, the US had declared that its global offensive against terrorism would have two phases. The first phase, it said, would involve the destruction of Osama Bin Ladin's Al Qaida terrorist network and its affiliates. It was implied that this phase would not take too long, given the military, economic and technological disparity between the two sides. The second phase, which some American officials said could last up to a decade if not more, would involve the targeting of all those who support terrorist acts, harbour terrorists, or otherwise facilitate their activities.

The second phase was referred to as a "draining of the swamp", during which the environment where the terrorists function will be destroyed, prompting them to come out of hiding and be caught by the US and its global anti-terror coalition. US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has declared that the war against terrorism would employ diplomatic, financial, intelligence and other means - and the focus during the second phase would be more on those aspects than on sustained military strikes as is currently underway as part of the first phase (Phase Two of the war against terrorism will be covered in the next issue).

Phase One has been underway since the night of Oct. 7, or early morning Oct. 8 in the theatre of military action. Washington has by now developed a well-structured method for such campaigns, with the prototype technique having been tried out in Iraq during the January-February 1991 Gulf War. Thus the campaign against the Taliban regime began with air strikes against air defence and other targets aimed at suppressing the Taliban's air defence capability. It was reported that Special Forces had already been slipped into the country to designate vital targets and "paint" them with lasers so that the laser-guided bombs do not miss their targets.

US efforts were made considerably more effective due to the fact that it received extensive intelligence co-operation from a number of countries in the area, most importantly from Pakistan which had created the Taliban and knew all its strengths and weaknesses. By Oct. 10, the US declared that it had achieved "air superiority" and that from then on it carry out operations in an environment of "air supremacy" - i.e. no challenge to its might in the air even from the primitive air defence systems of the Taliban.