Do not escalate the "smart war"

The military offensive that the United States and Britain have launched against Afghanistan is presumably the first overt aspect of a smart war against the terrorists with a global reach and also their hosts. For the larger international community, a sensible course at this early stage of this conflict in Afghanistan is to impress upon the American-British coalition and its military allies in the wings to recognize and avert the geopolitical risks as also the human costs of a wider conflagration. This will be a difficult but humane choice. And, if the U.S.-UK brain-trust is indeed capable of sustaining its own agenda of a smart war, it should take the initiative to scale down the losses of human lives and of civilian assets to truly negligible proportions.

The Anglo-American attacks have already entailed the use of the utmost state-of-the-art cruise missiles and a range of stealth bombers for aerial sorties to deliver "smart" but ferocious weapons. Arguably, these devices will help target Osama's terrorist camps as also the military machinery of the Taliban with a high degree of unprecedented precision that might curtail or rule out civilian casualties in significant numbers. Yet, the first waves of the Anglo-American military intrusions across the sky over Afghanistan have already forced its hapless inhabitants out of their miserable homes.

So, the global community cannot simply ignore the conspicuous signs of a humanitarian catastrophe. A fresh exodus of Afghan refugees, perhaps numbering over a million, may have already been caused by the terrifying impact or images of the American-British military might. Already hosting countless refugees of the past conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan is obviously wary of a new influx into its territory.

-- The Hindu, New Delhi