Ground War Strategies Part 3:
Approaches to the Battlefield
2340 GMT, 011109
Summary
Imposing a comprehensive military solution requires the deployment of ground forces. This, in turn, means the United States will need staging areas where troops and supplies can be positioned in preparation for sustained battlefield operations. Getting U.S. troops to the battlefield is a strategic dilemma that will have consequences for both the U.S. war in Afghanistan and the region as a whole.
Analysis
All U.S. interventions in Eurasia, from World War I to Desert Storm, required Washington first to mobilize its forces, which were transported and then deployed near the theater of operations. The second phase -- an assault by these forces on the enemy -- was entirely dependent on the first.
This phased approach is dictated by geography. The United States is fighting far from home -- in environments in which indigenous forces normally outnumber them, are fully acclimated and frequently have had greater combat experience than Americans.
Such is the case in Afghanistan. Therefore, the United States needs to move sufficient forces near the theater to contain the enemy as quickly as possible. Inevitably, a period of danger exists in which forces are deployed but are not yet in a position to defend themselves. It took the United States six months to build up the troops, equipment and supplies needed to field a force of 500,000 during Desert Storm.
Also, the distance U.S. forces must travel to reach the battlefield is extreme. This poses problems for force deployment, uninterrupted supplies and access to the country. The United States must therefore turn to Afghanistan's neighbors: Iran, Pakistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Yet each of these countries presents unique strategic and logistical problems.
Ground War Strategies Part 3: The U.S. Mission
This analysis is a study of what a U.S. ground campaign in Afghanistan will look like. Drawn entirely from public sources, the study in no way provides an advantage to any combatant who would have superior sources of intelligence, deeper experience in warfare and more intimate knowledge of terrain. This reported is intended to benefit the citizens of all combatant countries and is designed to inform them, in as objective a fashion as possible, of the issues involved in a land war in Afghanistan.
The United States is now weighing options for launching a large-scale ground offensive in Afghanistan. In order to understand the menu of choices, military planners must first identify characteristics of the theater of operations that will determine the shape of battle. In treating the Afghan theater of operations in isolation, the critical question is whether the United States can impose a comprehensive military solution.
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Related Analysis:
Ground War Strategies Part 1: Grand Strategy
-5 November 2001
Ground War Strategies Part 2: The Northern Alliance
-7 November 2001
The Southern Option
All strategic considerations point to a southern invasion route. Kandahar is the Taliban's base of power. It is also more easily accessible by U.S. sea power, and the terrain in the south is much less mountainous and far more suited for the style of warfare favored by the United States. But choosing a southern option would require a route through one of two neighboring countries, Iran or Pakistan.
Iran
Iran stretches 581 miles (936 kilometers) along Afghanistan's western border. It has a well-developed port system along the eastern shores of the Persian Gulf, an established transport infrastructure and a porous border that could provide a number of staging areas and several well-established routes into Afghanistan.
However, Washington and Tehran have no diplomatic ties, and Iran does not support the U.S. war in Afghanistan. This would seem to preclude Iran as an option.
Pakistan
The United States must have ports close to the theater of operations for the off-loading of armor, helicopters and supplies in large enough numbers to support multi-divisional, combined arms operations. These exist in Pakistan. U.S. carrier battle groups are already in the Arabian Sea, and providing support for a U.S. offensive in the south would be much easier than in the north.
The great weakness of the southern strategy is that the ports -- and the area between the ports and Afghanistan -- belong to Pakistan. Islamabad has not, to date, appeared willing or able to offer the United States the right to use its territory as a staging area for a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan.
The Taliban derives largely from the Pushtun ethnic group, which inhabits both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pushtuns are the second-largest ethnic group in Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Economist, the country's largest business magazine, and many sympathize with the Taliban against the United States. A hostile population in Pakistan precludes the United States from operating in sizeable numbers anywhere between Islamabad and Quetta. Even the port of Karachi is closed to a large-scale U.S. deployment because the city is a seat of opposition and a conduit for radical Muslims traveling to Afghanistan from the Middle East.
This leaves Washington in a quandary. If it is to impose a comprehensive military settlement on Afghanistan, its only serious option is to be given -- or to seize -- the ports in Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as well as the entire region between the Arabian Sea and Afghanistan. Though inhabited, this area is much less densely populated than the rest of Pakistan.
Yet a number of logistical difficulties remain. The ports are small, and few roads could easily accommodate a massive U.S. operation. Securing a line of supply from Pakistan's southwestern ports of Pasni and Gwadar north through the plateau to a destination such as the Dalbandin air base would string U.S. forces out in Pakistan, making them vulnerable to guerrilla assault. Convoying supplies northward from the ports north is possible but dangerous.
Still, if it had this, the United States might recreate the massive buildup of Desert Storm. Conceivably, it might even be ready for major operations as early as late spring 2002. But without access to and control of this region, launching a large-scale operation in Afghanistan by next spring would be impossible.
The problem is, of course, that the Pakistani government -- even if it were inclined to grant the United States what it is asking for -- might not survive the grant and could not necessarily provide security in the region.
Therefore, to invade Afghanistan from the south, the United States would first have to pacify the local population in Baluchistan and protect against guerrilla attacks. In effect, the United States would have to invade Pakistan.
The Northern Option
Given that a southern invasion of Afghanistan would require the invasion of Pakistan, a more viable option is a massive buildup along Afghanistan's northern frontier.
Of Afghanistan's three northern neighbors, Turkmenistan is an unlikely ally. The country is extremely independent and does not fall under the sway of Russia, which has signed on to a U.S. offensive. Turkmenistan has refused to support a U.S. military campaign, and moreover, the government has reportedly reached an accommodation with the Taliban.
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
Roads and passes leading into Afghanistan from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are controlled by the Northern Alliance, an experienced indigenous force that has already engaged the Taliban in combat. Also, Russia -- the region's power broker -- has encouraged the United States to launch an offensive from the north. Both Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have offered air bases and staging areas to U. S. forces.
The northern option, however, would be a logistical nightmare. Transporting forces at multi-divisional levels would take several months and make a comprehensive spring offensive impossible. The United States could fly its troops in, but equipment and supplies would have to be shipped to a Eurasian port and then sent by rail for forward deployment.
Three alternatives are possible. The United States could use Russian equipment, which would solve logistical problems but would create a training nightmare. The United States could use Russian troops, if they were made available, but this would violate the operating principles of comprehensive warfare and should be considered in a different scenario. Finally, the United States could rely entirely on a light infantry force, combined with air power -- an expansion of current U.S. tactics. This would solve the logistical problem, but it would impose serious limits on a comprehensive solution. Washington will rely on indigenous allies, including the Northern Alliance, but it cannot let them do the job alone.
Head-to-head fighting between a foreign and a native light infantry force in the region would pose tremendous difficulties for U.S. troops. There is no reason to think that U.S. infantry, by itself, is superior to Taliban infantry. The air power multiplier would be important but matched by the Taliban's mastery of the terrain. Seizing Afghanistan from the north and moving south using only light infantry would be costly, time-consuming and quite likely to lead to defeat.
Another consideration: the Taliban strongholds are in the south. U.S. troops coming from the north would be forced to divide. Only small squads of special forces, led by indigenous guides, can make it through the mountains that dominate the central part of the country. The larger columns of heavy infantry and armor would be forced to skirt the mountains down the western side through Herat in order to reach the Taliban headquarters in Kandahar. This indirect approach would also be time-consuming, costly and dangerous.
Nor is it clear that the Taliban must hold Kandahar in order to remain a viable political and military force. The Taliban's response to the invasion might be to disperse its main forces, leaving only sufficient forces in Kandahar to impose painful attrition on U.S. troops. Then, having drawn the Americans into the mountains, they could engage in a lengthy guerrilla war, hitting extended U.S. supply lines, harassing U.S. bases and forcing the United States into what it fears most -- a battle of attrition.
To avoid this, the United States will need to use its air-mobile capability aggressively and early in the war -- accepting the inevitable losses of vulnerable helicopters -- to attack and cut off lines of retreat and dispersal of the Taliban. As the main force moves up toward the mountains, air-mobile forces will have to be used as blocking elements to force the Taliban into the battle they want to avoid.
In order to wage this fluid, air-mobile battle, the United States must have superb tactical intelligence. In part, the Taliban must have a fixed dispersal plan if troops are to marry up with supplies. But in part, any plan is undoubtedly extremely flexible and contingent on U.S. operations. Extracting the fixed intelligence will be difficult enough. The United States has never succeeded in marrying real-time tactical intelligence to a coherent, large-scale battle plan on a dispersed battlefield -- nor has anyone else.
The United States therefore faces another challenge. If the Taliban declines a decisive battle and disperses, its survival will depend on lines of supply from Pakistan -- particular Quetta, directly across the border from the Kandahar region and areas to the north.
Regional War
As the United States learned in Vietnam and the Soviets learned in Afghanistan, defeating a guerrilla force requires it to be sealed off from sanctuary and resupply. Where sanctuary and supplies exist, guerrillas have the advantage.
Therefore, the United States will have to make provisions to seal the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier. The obvious temptation will be to use air power. This was the solution on the Ho Chi Minh Trail; it didn't work. In practice, U.S. forces would have to occupy, pacify and control the border regions of Pakistan in order to make its comprehensive strategy work.
The strategic and operational logic of a comprehensive solution forces us to a single conclusion: In order to impose a military solution on Afghanistan, the United States must first take control of large areas of Pakistan. This is true regardless of what the Pakistani government promises, since the military regime of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf cannot guarantee its own power and U.S. forces would be at risk.
A Pakistani solution is not out of the question, but it will certainly strain U.S. capabilities to their limit. Invading both Afghanistan and Pakistan would require hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied troops just to secure the lines of supply running north from the southern ports of Pasni and Gwadar up through the Baluchistan plateau to the air base at Dalbandin.
Regardless of the ambitions of the comprehensive solution, the United States would need more than subsidiary coalition members. It would need India to collaborate in the occupation and dismemberment of Pakistan, or at the very least, an escalation of the Kashmir conflict in order to create a diversionary war. The United States would also have to destroy Pakistan's nuclear capability. Coordinating with India to invade or dismember Pakistan, however, would be catastrophic for U.S. interests in the Middle East and could very well trigger a conflict with Iran as well.
Conclusion
Any comprehensive solution would require that the conflict be extended into a regional one. Even in that case, the ability to avoid a guerrilla conflict in Afghanistan for some period of time is low and would require a substantial deployment of forces along the frontier with Pakistan -- an extremely difficult environment in which to operate.
The nature of the comprehensive strategy is such that it is unsustainable as a self-contained operation. Reliance on Indian forces is a necessity, given the limits of U.S. force projection. Under these circumstances, it would appear to STRATFOR that a comprehensive military solution is impossible. Unlike Desert Storm and the U.S. bombing campaign in Kosovo, this is one battle the United States cannot shape to its strategic advantage.
