The New Rules Of Engagement

By Romesh Ratnesar

For anyone who has been clinging to the notion that America can win this war the easy way, the fate of Abdul Haq should serve as a powerful antidote. Few knew how to fight in the rugged Afghan steppes and summits better than Haq, a legendary mujahedin guerrilla who lost his right foot to a land mine while helping rout the Soviets. He left Afghanistan during the post-Soviet power struggle and renounced politics after his wife and son were murdered in his Peshawar, Pakistan, home. But he recently returned to the Afghan frontier, hoping to enlist defectors and warlords in an anti-Taliban southern alliance. Because he was Pashtun--the dominant tribe of southern Afghanistan and the Taliban itself--Haq was a precious asset to the U.S., which desperately wants an erosion of Taliban authority in the south and east, where American commandos have launched the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

Last week Haq and 19 lightly armed aides slipped into Taliban territory to persuade fighters to rise up against the regime. But informers trailed him. For two days the Taliban staked out the home where Haq was staying. Early Friday morning Taliban troops surrounded him on three sides. Cut off in the Khyber Pass, Haq placed a call on his satellite phone to his nephew in Pakistan; word of Haq's distress soon reached the CIA. As Haq tried to escape on horseback, the U.S. sent an unmanned Predator surveillance plane to shoot a Hellfire missile at his pursuers. It missed. Soon after the Taliban captured Haq. He was taken to Kabul and executed as a U.S. spy.

For the American military, Haq's demise was a humbling end to a humbling week. Since the beginning of the campaign, the President's men have reminded Americans that this "new" kind of conflict could end up being as protracted as the cold war. And yet for a while the war seemed to be following a faster script--precision bombs clearing the way for a quick ground operation. After less than two weeks, the Pentagon was claiming that its bombs had "eviscerated" the Taliban's military capability. But last week that optimism faded. Dreams of a hit-and-run war gave way to the reality of a long twilight struggle that seems sure to drag into the Afghan winter. After more than 3,000 American bombs, the Taliban still has plenty of fight left in it; Taliban troops have thwarted a Northern Alliance offensive at Mazar-i-Sharif; civilian deaths are climbing; and many coalition partners--most crucially Pakistan--have grown impatient.

The war is only three weeks old, and U.S. and British officials insist things are going as expected. "You always hope for a lucky punch," says an Air Force commander. "But you usually don't get lucky, so you just keep pressing on." Pentagon officials have said some ground operations aimed at crushing the Taliban and al-Qaeda may not get under way until next spring. "We're not setting timetables," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday. In a remarkable admission, Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem said, "I am a bit surprised at how doggedly they're hanging onto power. We definitely need to have patience," he added. "This is going to be a long, long campaign."

Even in a new kind of war against an elusive adversary, some basic rules of engagement have emerged. Knowing them won't guarantee victory, but it may help us get through the dangerous months ahead.

RULE 1: DIG IN--THIS IS GOING TO TAKE SOME TIME

American air power can do plenty of damage, but Afghan experts say the Taliban's morale won't crack until it suffers heavy battlefield losses. So long as the U.S. limits its ground operations to commando raids, the job of inflicting those casualties lies with the Northern Alliance. Alliance commanders have provided their strategy for toppling the regime to anyone who will listen: once American bombs softened Taliban forces, the Alliance planned to make its move into the key northern outposts of Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz and Taliqan, cutting a swath through the heart of Taliban country. As the Alliance rolled back the Taliban in the north, the thinking went, the certainty of defeat would produce mass defections from the Taliban's ranks, and the regime would implode.

Time for Plan B. The first major ground battle, near Mazar-i-Sharif, took place last Monday, when hundreds of Northern Alliance troops serving under two commanders, Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum and Tajik general Mullah Ustad Mohammed Atta, swept toward the city and the 20,000 entrenched Taliban troops protecting it. The Alliance forces advanced to within 12 miles of Mazar, but a fierce Taliban counterattack led to savage street battles; Alliance forces managed to hold their front line but failed to advance much further. It's unlikely that the Alliance will march on Mazar anytime soon. The Taliban's antiaircraft weapons and control of the airport make it hard for the Northern Alliance to replenish ammunition, blankets and food. "Dostum is fighting with his bare hands," says a senior aide based in Uzbekistan. "He simply doesn't have enough bullets."

What the Alliance did have for the first time was heavy U.S. bombs dumped onto Taliban front lines. But those strikes were still measured, and Alliance frustration is growing. "The longer you wait, the more the Taliban can figure out how to continue life with constant air strikes," says a cavalry commander near Mazar.

And yet for all its showy impatience, much of the Alliance doesn't look war-ready. Near Khoja Bahauddin, on the Taliqan front, the Alliance must move its tanks across a steep-banked river before it can even think of mounting an offensive. That's not to say an Alliance breakthrough is impossible, especially if American strikes against the Taliban pick up. But even the most confident Alliance soldiers say it won't happen soon. "War is in our blood," says Safaullah, a fighter in Dasht-i-Qala. "We'll fight for centuries if we have to."

RULE 2: THAT HOUSE IS REALLY A WEAPONS DEPOT

The Pentagon's most optimistic estimate is that 85% of American bombs and missiles have hit their targets. But that means that 450 or more may have gone astray, regularly nailing civilian structures and residential neighborhoods. The military has struggled to explain some of its mistakes. Rumsfeld flatly denied a Taliban report that a U.S. warhead landed on a hospital in Herat. But the next day he sent his spokeswoman out to concede that "it is possible" a 1,000-lb. bomb from a U.S. F-18 accidentally damaged the hospital. The U.S. has also acknowledged dropping two 500-pounders in a residential area north of Kabul. On Friday American warplanes blitzing Kabul successfully leveled a target selected by Pentagon planners. But the target turned out to be a Red Cross warehouse--the same one the U.S. had hit by mistake 10 days earlier.

All of which has damaged whatever credibility America might have had among the ordinary Afghans it hopes to convert. The Taliban, like the Iraqis and Serbs before them, have exaggerated civilian casualties while helping create more of them by positioning artillery near mosques and schools--erecting human shields and daring the U.S. to hit them. Daud Khan, 28, a refugee coming out of Kandahar, the Taliban stronghold, told TIME that the regime's forces have moved into residential quarters of the city, occupied houses and put antiaircraft guns on the roofs. Another 45 camouflaged truckloads of weapons have been moved into the mountains.

Rumsfeld has pledged "to do everything humanly possible...to let the world know that this is not against the Afghan people," but he has little chance of winning that argument. Many rural Afghans will believe anything the Taliban tells them about the U.S.--including last week's accusation that American planes were dropping chemical weapons. The only way for the U.S. to counter such claims may be to slow the aerial campaign and avoid borderline targets altogether. The U.S. destroys about 1% of an enemy force for each day of bombing; by that yardstick, there remain many Taliban targets to hit--if the pilots can find them. But the targets' mobility, invisibility and dwindling numbers mean they can't be destroyed at once. A British defense official says that in coming stages of the campaign, days may pass in which no bombs fall.

RULE 3: WATCH YOUR BACK

There may be one compelling reason to scale back air strikes: doing so could help contain anti-American unrest in Pakistan, a war aim that will become vital as the thrust of the campaign shifts to ground operations by special forces. U.S. commandos staging from bases in Pakistani territory have already faced mortal danger. When two Chinook helicopters landed at the Panjgur airport in southern Pakistan after retrieving a downed U.S. chopper, aviation sources tell TIME, they were met with a swarm of bullets from pro-Taliban, Pakistani irregulars who were guarding the airport. The Chinooks returned fire for several minutes before roaring off. The ambush was extinguished by Pakistani military forces.

Since the firefight, the U.S. has conducted its operations in Pakistan with more discretion; at the airstrip in Jacobabad, U.S. aircraft now land only at night, without the aid of runway lights. American servicemen on motorcycles race up the strip to guide the gunships in. That has added another hazard to the difficult job of locating bin Laden and the Taliban leadership and going for their throats. British intelligence believes the bombing campaign has flushed bin Laden out of his hiding places, providing opportunities for prying eyes to fix his location and sell the information to the U.S. The forces arrayed against him are growing; last week Britain committed 200 Royal Marine commandos to participate in search-and-destroy ground raids.

The top British military commander, Michael Boyce, said last week that commando operations could go on for weeks at a time to give Western forces the chance to gather intelligence on their prey. But the longer special forces are on the ground inside Afghanistan, the bigger the bull's-eye on their backs. The special-ops raid staged near Kandahar last month nearly ended in disaster when, as TIME reported last week, U.S. commandos were ambushed by Taliban guerrillas. A central piece of the U.S. strategy--to grease the gates of entry into southern Afghanistan by turning tribal leaders and warlords against the Taliban--may have died along with Haq. His capture also highlighted the treachery of the Taliban's network of spies in Pakistan, who will try to tip off holy warriors in Kandahar to pending U.S. raids. In American war rooms, that reality--and the memories of Beirut and Mogadishu--haunts military strategists. As long as the public is patient and intelligence is thin, the Pentagon will wait on ordering up big commando missions that might produce heavy American casualties.

RULE 4: GIRD FOR WINTER

By late November, frigid winds will be blowing south from Siberia, and the mountain paths of the Hindu Kush will be buried in snow. The main supply route for Northern Alliance fighters north of Kabul will ice over. Working in the Alliance's favor: the Taliban like the cold even less. "They are from the south, so they are not used to winter fighting," says Noorahmad Atay, a commander in the Alliance-held Keshem district. "We are cold-weather people, so we can fight without a problem."

The U.S. Army has for years trained to fight in winter conditions. But no matter how inured to the elements a fighting force may be, everything is harder in the cold. Bundled-up troops have difficulty moving and hearing instructions, and the cushion of snow can smother the potency of munitions. Soldiers barreling out of transport planes must prevent the condensation that forms inside their rifle barrels from freezing; that could cause weapons to burst when fired.

The weather poses particular problems for special-ops forces, who rely on low-altitude helicopter and warplane support that could get scuppered by storms. But one of the key methods the U.S. military will use to hunt down cave-dwelling terrorists will be helped by the chill. U.S. choppers are equipped with systems especially designed to detect heat--including warm air coming from occupied caves. Once such a cave is detected, F-15Es will be dispatched to collapse it by dropping 5,000-lb. EGBU-28 bunker-busting bombs on them, or by firing AGM-130 Maverick missiles into them. Inclement weather may offer an added bonus: if a storm strands bin Laden's traveling convoy in a mountain hideaway for even a day too long, the U.S.'s heat-seeking gunships may have time to take him out.

RULE 5: GET A BETTER MEGAPHONE

In one theater the U.S. is already losing big: the battle for the support of despairing people in Afghanistan, massed along the Pakistan border and shouting in the streets of the world's Islamic capitals. Last week Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf called for a prompt end to military action but also said his government will cooperate with the U.S. "until the objectives are achieved." His government's inability to contain jihadist fervor was underscored last Tuesday, when 22 Pakistani volunteers were killed in a bombing raid on Taliban forces in Kabul.

Even so, the Musharraf government does not appear in danger of collapse; and despite the possibility of a protracted war, the 140-nation coalition against terrorism is holding. An immediate concern is Muslim disgruntlement about the U.S.'s conducting operations during the holy month of Ramadan. Secretary of State Colin Powell said last week that the U.S. will see where it stands when Ramadan begins, Nov. 17. In private, everyone knows the fighting won't stop. "It's a hedge," says a senior official. "We're not going to give them a free pass on Ramadan."

That's understandable--Muslim armies have often waged war during Ramadan--but hedging won't win the propaganda war. The West is trying to make up ground; the British government has booked Arabic-speaking officials to appear on al-Jazeera and other TV outlets, and last week the U.S. enlisted former ambassador to Syria Chris Ross, who speaks Arabic, to do similar interviews. But the American President may need to pitch in as well. St. Andrews University terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp offers a suggestion: Bush should master a few Arabic words and broadcast a message to Muslims before Ramadan, the way John Kennedy melted cold war suspicions in 1963 by declaring "Ich bin ein Berliner." It may not work as well this time. But if the U.S. hopes to keep the world on board for the long haul, it's as good a place as any to start.

--Reported by Hannah Beech/Keshem, Hannah Bloch and Terry McCarthy/Islamabad, Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/Washington, Mitch Frank/New York, Ghulam Hasnain/Chaman, J.F.O McAllister/London, Tim McGirk/Quetta and Alex Perry/Tashkent

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With reporting by Hannah Beech/Keshem, Hannah Bloch and Terry McCarthy/Islamabad, Massimo Calabresi and Mark Thompson/Washington, Mitch Frank/New York, Ghulam Hasnain/Chaman, J.F.O McAllister/London, Tim McGirk/Quetta and Alex Perry/Tashkent