War on terrorism is not war on Afghanistan

By Meidyatama Suryodiningrat

JAKARTA (JP): With the U.S. strike force ready to launch and the American public hungry for revenge, Washington looks set to escalate their war on terrorism into a war on Afghanistan.

Supported by global grief from the attack on the World Trade Center and backed by UN Security Council Resolutions 1267 (1999) and 1368 (2001), Washington may contend to have the moral right to launch such a massive attack.

While it has yet to publicly expose the evidence linking Osama bin Laden to the latest attacks, the connection between the Taliban in Afghanistan and the alleged terrorist is widely known.

The UNSC in 1999 had already condemned the use of Taliban territory "for the sheltering and training of terrorists."

It specifically deplored Taliban providing a safe haven for Bin Laden and his associates to operate a network of terrorist camps.

The 1999 Resolution called on states to freeze financial resources owned or bound for the Taliban. A ban on Taliban aircraft was also imposed.

While these stringent measures presume Taliban's guilt, no where does it endorse military attacks.

Keep in mind that the 1999 Resolution also specifically noted the United States' indictment of bin Laden in the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

It is thus not surprising that some may consider whether an attack would constitute a violation of international law, which only condones military force for self-defense, not retaliation.

The wisdom of a possible wide-scale offensive needs to be questioned.

Terrorist networks such as bin Laden's do not depend on established state infrastructure.

What could the U.S. tangibly strike to cripple the terrorist's capability? There are few, if any, clear fixed targets such as landmark terrorist headquarters.

Albeit seeking refuge in Afghanistan's hills, past intelligence reports indicate that Bin Laden is a sovereign operator due to his huge inheritance and not dependent on direct government financial or logistical support found in common state- backed terrorism models.

Thus massive air strikes, so popular since the Gulf War, will only victimize the people of Afghanistan, whose regime seems willing to put innocent lives in peril.

The United States has already tried bombing Bin Laden before, with little success.

A land invasion would be catastrophic, would fail to learn the lessons of history. Napoleon, the British and the Soviet Union include the illustrious list of failures.

An invasion would lead to a drawn-out counterinsurgent war.

In this age of instant news and fickle public opinion the tide of public opinion can easily change when images of hungry children are contrasted to multi-million dollar war machines.

Even moderate Muslim nations like Indonesia cannot tolerate futile civilian deaths.

By overreacting Washington will only turn public opinion, particularly those in Muslim states, against them.

President George W. Bush charging that you're either "with us or against us" does not help. The world is not black or white, there are too many gray areas.

Washington's reticence of Israel's aggression toward the Palestine population is a case in point.

What then are the options?

Whatever steps are taken must be in accordance with international law and the support of the United Nations.

The first step of establishing an international front against terrorism is commendable, but such a coalition must be under the aegis of the UN even if the U.S. is the predominant component of such an alliance.

Washington must avoid the impression of acting unilaterally if it wants a true coalition to be more than rhetoric.

Tightly applied UN imposed economic and political sanctions, if necessary isolation, should be considered first. The U.S. could use its military might to make sure that nothing gets in or out by tightly monitoring Afghanistan's borders.

If such measures were still considered wanting, limited military action should take the form of surgical strikes.

Ground operations could be launched involving special forces to capture internationally indicted individuals such as the experience in Serbia and Bosnia.

These actions could also engage in pre-emptive strikes at terrorists to disable identifiable terrorist cells.

Everyone sympathizes and feels sorrow for the victims of the horrific attacks that occurred on Sept. 11.

But such a tragedy does not license states to disregard international norms in vengeance, or even allow them to create new parameters, which could excuse wanton reprisal.

The state use of indiscriminate force on civilians is still terrorism by other means.

The author is a staff writer of The Jakarta Post.