General warns of unwinnable guerrilla war
By Ben Fenton in Washington
(Filed: 22/03/2002)


THE former commander of Nato forces in Europe fears that America, Britain and their allies could become embroiled in an unwinnable guerrilla war in Afghanistan.

Gen Wesley Clark said in an interview with The Telegraph that there were "worrisome signs" that the allies were drifting into a position similar to that which assailed Soviet forces after their invasion in 1979. "They won big victories to start with," he said. "It took a year or two for the opposition to build up."


Gen Clark: Western forces must win support of Afghan warlords
His words will stoke the concern of MPs and others in Britain who fear that the deployment of 1,700 troops based around a Royal Marines commando unit will be the first step in an entanglement that will end in disaster.

Asked if the Western forces could be dragged into a war that, like the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, would prove attritional and eventually disastrous, Gen Clark said: "I do think it's a possibility. The thing we must have is intelligence domination on the battlefield and that means human intelligence and that means boots on the ground."

The former commander of the campaign that drove Serbian forces from Kosovo in 1999 cautioned against alarmism, pointing out that the Western forces had two major advantages over the Russians. "We have technology at our hands which is far more than they ever had and also, right now, there is no overtly opposing superpower [playing the antagonist role that America did by arming and training mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan in the 1980s].

"But we must be sure to show great strength. Some Afghans will oppose us just because we are foreigners unless we have strong capabilities on show."

Gen Clark said it was necessary to win the support of Afghan warlords by persuasion rather than intimidation. "We are a long way from this being over and it could still all go wrong."

He said one way that would happen would be if allied forces allowed themselves to become involved in guerrilla warfare and the other way would be if there was serious factional strife in the country.

"We have to reach accommodations with the warlords. At the moment, I have to say, there are worrisome signs." He said America must resist taking the al-Qa'eda and Taliban on in guerrilla warfare and again stressed the need for reliable intelligence.

"You can't win a war simply by being there and reacting to that kind of warfare. You have to do some information building and then you have to have a strong fighting force ready to follow it up. But you can't do one function without the other."

Gen Clark was speaking as the commander of American forces involved in Operation Anaconda said Taliban and al-Qa'eda forces were trying to re-group on both sides of the Afghan border with Pakistan. Maj Gen Frank "Buster" Hagenbeck predicted increased military activity as the weather improves.

"I can tell you there are al-Qa'eda operatives in Pakhtia [the province where Operation Anaconda was fought] right now who are going to great lengths to re-group."

He rejected claims by allied Afghan commanders that many al-Qa'eda fighters escaped during the offensive. American officers using remote-controlled spy planes had watched hundreds of enemy moving into the Shah-e-Kot valley in the first days of Anaconda, despite the fact that the area was under attack by American forces.

"They were trying to push through, and we allowed them to come in. They were coming in very small groups, three, four, five at a time, using a trail network and they flowed into the valley over a 48-hour period."

Even as they came under heavy bombing and ground combat, the fighters continued to enter and monitoring of al-Qa'eda communications suggested that commanders could not warn their men.

American officials claim about 500 were killed, but only a few dozen corpses have been recovered. Maj Gen Hagenbeck attributed this to the fact that bodies had been blown to bits by bombs.