Northern rebels take over Kabul.
Well ... it was never terribly realistic for the US to say to the Northern Alliance, "Excuse me, but we'd really prefer that you not take your capital, for our own political reasons." Granted, in the long run it may prove to have been a political mistake ... but in terms of a military campaign, not taking the city when it was open would be amazingly silly. It may stretch Alliance resources a bit thin to actually hold it at the moment, but we'll see.
The Taliban are likely to have serious motivational problems if they've actually abandoned Kandahar, as reported. After all, they consider that their spiritual seat, as it were. Once you've abandoned both the capital and your spiritual center, what on earth do you have left to fight for? (You do wonder why they've taken the aid workers with them to Kandahar, especially if they're planning to abandon it as well. Although I get the impression that the people fleeing to Kandahar don't know about the people fleeing from it and may be in for a nasty surprise. Surely they can't think that the aid workers would be at all effective as some sort of hostages or shields? For one thing, it's not likely that we'll even know where they are.)
And now the UN and US are scrambling to figure out what on earth to do now, what with the acute lack of government. (Just a hint: although I do expect that they'll try to quickly come up with some sort of Muslim multinational force to occupy Kabul, I somehow doubt that Indonesia will be invited to participate, if it's at all avoidable. Given their public anti-US stance on the issues, it would seem to be somewhat unwise.)
Replies: 1 Comment
The people fleeing to Kandahar won't be surprised because they're not going to get that far. Our air units are going to be swarming all over them like hornets (ahem).
Posted by Steven C. Den Beste @ 11/13/2001 10:25 AM CST
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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