November 9, 2002
The United States military is losing momentum in the war in Afghanistan because the remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have proved to be more successful in adapting to US tactics than the US military has to theirs, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said this week.
General Richard Myers also said a debate was taking place within the Pentagon on whether the US needs to change its priorities in Afghanistan and play down military operations in favour of more support for reconstruction efforts."I think in a sense we've lost a little momentum there, to be frank," General Myers said in after-dinner comments on Monday night at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
"They've made lots of adaptations to our tactics, and we've got to continue to think and try to out-think them and to be faster at it."The CIA recently described security as "most precarious in smaller cities and some rural locations", and said: "Reconstruction may be the single most important factor in increasing security throughout Afghanistan and preventing it from again becoming a haven for terrorists.
"Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai recently launched an anti-corruption campaign aimed at cracking down on provincial leaders who continue to challenge the authority of the central government. Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, called the suggested shift in priorities "noteworthy and extremely important".
But he said he doubted whether General Myers or the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, would commit US forces to "tackling the fundamental security problem in Afghanistan, which is not al-Qaeda, but a by-product of the way we fought - arming the warlords".
"What needs to be done is to take away the power of the warlords and give it to the central government, and that requires real military force," Mr Daalder said. "Are we prepared to take on the very guys we empowered? I don't see any evidence that is the case."
In his remarks at Brookings, General Myers said al-Qaeda had proved to be an agile adversary, adapting its electronic communications to prevent intercepts and securing the way it passed money. His comments reflect a concern that many US officials have expressed privately in recent months that the military establishment has been too slow to adapt in its response to the al-Qaeda threat.
One official close to Mr Rumsfeld said this week that, in his view, the military was still largely geared to changing at the glacial pace of the Cold War, during which shifts in military doctrine and weaponry in the Soviet Union occurred generationally. Al-Qaeda and its allies have shown "an ability to change by the month", the official said.
A detailed analysis just released by the US Army War College reported that al-Qaeda fighters have been quick to adapt to the high-tech weaponry the US has used in its attack on the network.
One officer added: "It's the general consensus within the [Special Operations] community that al-Qaeda is extremely adaptive and very cagey. These guys are not weekend terrorists."
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