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Posted on 09/23/2001 6:10:01 PM PDT by matcrazy

RADEK SIKORSKI, now Poland's deputy foreign minister, fought alongside Afghani guerrillas against the Russians in the 1980s and kept in touch ever since. This is his personal plan for a Western victory in Afghanistan
Every rock and every irrigation canal was my cover from Soviet bombing when I travelled through Afghanistan with the mujahideen in 1987. Poland was communist, I was a refugee in Britain and the Afghanis were fighting the Red Army, the same that kept us underfoot.

Their struggle was mine and I joined it using a telephoto lens - and one or two bursts from a Kalashnikov assault rifle. I made several journeys into occupied Afghanistan, the last in February 1989 to watch through Mujahideen binoculars the last Soviet convoy leave Kabul.

Many times, bombs fell as near as 100 yards away, mortars even closer, yet the guerrillas and I usually escaped injury. We kept constantly on the move. It was the civilians who paid a heavy price. In one air raid alone, I saw 70 people, mostly women and children, buried by bombs in their mud-brick houses.

Helicopters were more effective. One morning in the desert near Kandahar, a patrol of Hind helicopter gunships surprised us during a nap after morning prayers. Four helicopters circled low over the roofs, spraying rockets and machine-gun fire. The very racket of the rotors made flesh tremble under my skin.

Our convoy lost two trucks and a few injured. Our route across the mountains was strewn with carcasses of trucks and pick-ups destroyed in helicopter attacks and Spetznats (Soviet special forces) ambushes. Even so, travelling at night and keeping to the mountains, I made it in six weeks to the city of Herat, near the Soviet and Iranian borders.

Osama bin Laden, who was in Afghanistan at the same time, knows the land very well. He has already dispersed his forces over several provinces and keeps radio communication to a minimum, merging with the wild terrain. Over the past few years, he has built up a network of contacts, as well as shelters and stores of supplies.

As we did, he travels by night and hides by day. Traditional American methods of high-altitude bombing and guided missiles strikes will be insufficient to get him. Even if a satellite or a reconnaissance plane spots him, how will it identify him? How will it keep track of him long enough to command an air strike or deliver a cruise missile?

The Americans seem to know that a classic invasion would be worse, an outright disaster. If there are two military commandments born of experience of the past two centuries, they are: first, thou shalt not march on Moscow; second, thou shalt not march on Kabul.

Moscow kept more than 100,000 troops in the country and failed to subdue Afghanistan. And that was from the position of a neighbouring country, with rail and road links right to the border.

Many Soviet air strikes were conducted from Soviet territory. America, on the other hand, is a maritime power. Its operation against Afghanistan will have to be conducted at the end of a long supply line, with the nearest bases thousands of miles away.

Logistically, it would be similar to the expedition against the Falkland Islands, except that the country to be seized is infinitely more hostile and the size of France.

To mount a successful invasion, the US would have to carry out a Second World War-style mobilisation. And snow is already falling on many passes. The Afghani winter is no season for fighting.

Since air strikes will not suffice and an invasion is too risky, what can the US and Nato do to carry out the UN Security Council resolutions and bring bin Laden to justice? Here is how I would do it:

To begin with, find yourself Afghani allies. The best antidote against Muslim fanatics are Muslim moderates. They know their country best and have plenty of reasons to want to be rid of the Taliban.

As it happens, little-noticed by most of the world, an Afghani government that had been warning the world about the Taliban continues to resist them both inside and outside the country. It is called the Northern Alliance and still controls a pocket of territory near the Tajik border, as well as having important commanders all over the country.

It suffered a great loss recently when Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir and a hero of the war against the Soviets, was murdered by two Arabs posing as journalists two days before the attack on America.

They were apparently Westernised, carried stolen Belgian passports, and blew themselves up together with Massoud by means of a bomb concealed inside a camera. They were, in short, the same sort of people who struck at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

Massoud may well have been liquidated in anticipation of a Western action against bin Laden and the Taliban. Massoud was an important figure, but his death does not end the Northern Alliance. I have kept up with my Afghani friends over the years, both privately and officially, as Poland's deputy minister for foreign affairs.

The Alliance's foreign minister, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, visited Poland twice. He is a moderate, sophisticated individual, as proficient in diplomatic salons as he used to be fighting the Soviets in his native Panjshir valley.

Last week, pleading for US military aid, he said: "Our forces could act now and put pressure on the Taliban in different areas of the country." Alas, so far the Americans have not responded to him.

I have kept in touch, too, with Ismael Khan, the former governor of Herat, Afghanistan's third largest city, who spent two years as a Taliban prisoner and is now back inside the country, organising resistance. Another I have held talks with is the impressive Haji Kadir, the former governor of Jellalabad, whose Pashto ethnicity proves that the Taliban are losing support even among their own tribal brethren.

The Northern Alliance would have to be reorganised into a broad-based government that included most of Afghanistan's myriad ethnic, religious and social groups. It should then be supported with financial and military assistance channelled both through neighbouring countries as well as directly, via an airbridge from US bases in the Middle East and from ships off the Pakistani coast.

Given the volatility of Afghani politics, it could probably wrest control over the country from the Taliban in a matter of months. In return, the Northern Alliance can provide the intelligence, the guides and the support on the ground that America will need to find and seize bin Laden and his men.

To get him, US commandos will have to be sent on missions inside Afghanistan. Only a guerrilla can successfully fight a guerrilla, the way the British did it in Malaya. However, by pursuing terrorists at their own level, you lose most of your technical advantage, and casualties inevitably follow.

To fight bin Laden and the Taliban by backing the Northern Alliance would, to be sure, involve us in a classic proxy war. Has this tactic not been discredited in Afghanistan where the West backed the mujahideen, only to be haunted by Osama bin Laden today?

Let us never forget that the CIA's proxy war against the Soviet Union succeeded beyond all dreams. The Soviet Union - the 20th century's bloodiest tyranny - not only withdrew but collapsed, all at the cost of about $10 billion.

If that sounds a lot, bear in mind that the Soviets spent about $100 million fighting - and losing - the Afghani war. The Northern Alliance is the ally that fought the good fight for us and was then abandoned. It is this which has now proven a catastrophic mistake.

The US and Nato should not go into war against the Afghani people, who have suffered enough from war and from the Taliban. On the contrary, the only way to prevent that country from becoming a terrorist heaven again is to re-establish a civilian government in Kabul.

Only when normal state structures regain control over the territory by disbursing food, medecines and development aid will most refugees return home and will the entire region gain a chance of peace and stability.

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