There is little danger of the war being widened

Martin Woollacott, Guardian News Service, London

It may be an axiom in international affairs that less is usually done than is either hoped or feared. On the one hand, there are those who are fearful that the United States will widen its military operations beyond Afghanistan.

On the other, there are those who are hopeful that grand political objectives such as those outlined by the British prime minister Tony Blair will be fully attained. What both views tend to overlook are the limits on action, both those imposed by obdurate reality and those which leaders impose on themselves by doing less than they should or could.

The real danger today, in spite of the rhetoric of a campaign supposedly unlimited in space and time, is not that too much will be attempted, but too little. Militarily that may be welcome but in other ways it is not.

The pleas for restraint from many quarters during the past month are still coming as we wobble into war in Afghanistan. But in retrospect those calls may not have been as critical as they seemed at the time. The slow building up of military strength, a function both of logistics and of making the necessary regional arrangements, imposed a delay which was also a period of reflection.

That reflection suggested that even an America ready for casualties on a scale that could not have been contemplated before was not powerful enough to attack on any and every front. Anything to be done would have to be within America's military capacity, which is not as infinite as many people inside and outside America think. It would have to be threaded through the needle of a complex diplomacy. And it would have to be sustainable politically thereafter.

On all these counts Iraq is out of the question. It would be a huge military undertaking that might well be met by the use of weapons of mass destruction. Although there is more than one Muslim regime that would dearly like to see Saddam fall and although Iraqis themselves widely desire his departure, a war with Iraq would be impossible to justify to Muslims unless there were incontrovertible proof of Iraqi complicity in the attacks on America.

The storm that would be provoked in Muslim societies would make the troubles caused by the Afghan operation look like a rain shower. The American government would not risk all that unless it had to, because the evidence was totally convincing. Indeed the hard question, both moral and military, is whether it would do so even if such evidence did emerge.

What has been taken on in Afghanistan already involves enough risks. But what is not as well understood as it might be is that it also involves opportunities. In the Middle East, the best that can be hoped for is damage control. There is no chance of an immediate breakthrough on the Palestinian question, only of a shift, a very necessary one, in direction.

In South Asia there is another prospect, that of constructive change across the subcontinent. Most of the talk has been of the danger of internal strife in Pakistan, of that country slipping into fundamentalist hands, and of a consequent confrontation between Pakistan and India far worse than anything seen so far. It is worth saying that if Pakistan, or for that matter Saudi Arabia or Egypt, are that close to the edge they might well sooner or later go over it, even without a push from recent events.

It is also worth saying that an Islamist change does not mean the end of politics or the end of freedom. It did in Afghanistan, but that is an exceptional case. The characteristics of societies persist, as they did in Iran, where the issues of the Shah's time are all still alive in different form. Pakistan, similarly, could not have a "Taliban" government because Pakistan is not Afghanistan.

But if there is a significant minority of Pakistanis committed to fundamentalist ideas, there are large numbers who oppose them. Why should any tipping of the balance in Pakistan be toward the former rather than the latter? "Must we fight this battle abroad," writes ABS Jafri, a contributor to Dawn, one of the country's big newspapers, "and continue to play host to terror at home?"

Criticizing all Pakistani governments since Zia's time for their dangerous dalliance with religious extremism, he asks: "Can we afford to remain evasive or submissive to this aberration at home?"

The implication is of a showdown with extremist groups and, beyond that, of a repudiation of the interlinked domestic and foreign policies which have bankrupted Pakistan and isolated the country internationally.

Now, unexpected relief has come in the form of American aid and other inducements to Pakistan, and more, such as help on debt, may follow. But what has also come is an opportunity for Gen. Parvez Musharraf to take the country in a different direction.

In prospect is an escape, for him as a leader, and for Pakistani society as a whole, from the corrupting entanglement with Afghanistan, from the unwinnable battle in Kashmir, and from the other consequences of the 50-year-old confrontation with India.

If India reacts not with anger at the American tilt to Islamabad, but with an eye on the tilt that could come in Pakistan, the chances that the old quarrel between the two nations could be reduced in its dimensions or even ended would increase.

Colin Powell, who arrives in the subcontinent Friday, should see his task as much more than patching up relationships for the duration of the campaign in Afghanistan.

"Is (top U.S. general) Tommy Franks ready to go?" asks Bush. The Americans want to give an impression of cool confidence. Behind the scenes, no doubt, there will be uncertain calculation, hasty improvisation, and more than occasional desperation.

The military difficulties of Afghanistan have perhaps been overestimated, but it is becoming more and more clear that this is primarily a political project rather than a military one. Defection may unravel the Taliban.

Judicious withholding of air support may keep the Northern Alliance out of the capital so as to give more time to mediators, especially the wise and able Lakhdar Brahimi. Jack Straw's confident announcement that "we" have been thinking about "the government and the governance" irks more than a little, because it suggests an underestimation of the difficulties as well as an assumption that it is always "we" who decide.

But the problem is less one of momentary arrogance than of large commitments now, like the 10-year plan for Afghanistan's rehabilitation that is apparently part of Tony Blair's strategy document, that get forgotten later. The United States keeps saying that this time it will not "walk away" yet habits are not easily broken.

Once the campaign has removed the Taliban, and assuming Osama bin Laden and his followers have been captured, killed, or scattered, the troops will quite rightly go. But will western attention, diplomacy, and concern go with them? And will the larger possibilities on the subcontinent be left unexplored after a few unsuccessful attempts?