By CHARLES F. WALD
October 01, 2014
How to Defeat ISIL From The Air
Don’t underestimate U.S. air power, says the commander who took out the Taliban.
Gen. Charles F. Wald (USAF ret.) is former deputy commander of U.S. European Command.
A week before Sept. 11, 2001, I happened to be in the Khyber Pass, on a mission related to U.S. sanctions against Pakistan. I remember thinking when I came back from that rugged, mountainous place: “I’m sure glad we don’t have to fight over there.” After all, neither the Soviets nor the British had succeeded militarily in Afghanistan – in fact, no nation ever had. Then, suddenly, we suffered the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and less than a month later we Americans found ourselves fighting in that very place I had just left. Not only that—now I was placed in command of the air campaign against the Taliban.
It all happened very fast, and essentially, we just made it up as we went along. On Oct. 7, 2001, then-President George W. Bush gave the go-ahead to begin bombing the Taliban and al Qaeda forces. That evening we had virtually zero U.S. or allied troops on the ground. Over the next few days and weeks we had a minimal number of very brave American special operations forces embedded with the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban coalition that was barely hanging on after being driven out of Kabul years earlier. With the advantage of superior intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), and high-tech air-delivered precision weapons, air power was able to provide the immediate result the United States was looking for: the defeat of the Taliban, who fled the major cities within weeks. They never knew what hit them.
It was a successful campaign—and it was done on the fly, as it were. We had to scramble to find support inside Afghanistan. For eyes on the ground we used foreign troops—the Northern Alliance rebels. The Taliban were shocked that we were able to get there as quickly as we did and turn things around. So were we, to be honest.
There is no reason that air power, used in a similar way, cannot be successful against the terrorists of the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria. But the American public must understand one thing: As in Afghanistan, there won’t be a simple black-and-white, win-or-lose outcome. Nor is it a binary question of either having boots on the ground on one hand or using only air power on the other. Both the mission and the objective are far more complex than that. Degrading and containing the Islamic State will be a long a difficult mission, possibly requiring a no-fly zone in Syria for a decade or more. We will also need to find people on the ground we can trust. There will be strange bedfellows, developed by our own people, including CIA or special operations forces who will be there for the sole purpose of identifying friendly or non-Islamic State forces. (In Syria, I should add, I do not believe those strange bedfellows should include Bashar al-Assad or his forces, given that he is now morally beyond the pale.)
In some respects, the task in Iraq and Syria might be even less problematic than it was in Afghanistan in 2001. True, as in Afghanistan, the enemy is many times intermingled with the innocent civilian population that we are intending to support. But unlike Afghanistan, the potential partners on the ground—the Kurdish peshmerga, the Iraqi military, and various Syrian rebel groups —possess basic military training and equipment. And unlike in Afghanistan, in most cases the terrain in northern Iraq and eastern Syria is open and flat, thus making it difficult to hide and avoid detection from overhead assets.
From an operational perspective , the air mission over northern Iraq is relatively easy. The Islamic State is not believed to possess or have the ability to operate sophisticated air-defense weapons or detection radar systems, making airstrike missions even more effective and sustainable. Air refueling tankers, intelligence and command-and-control aircraft could operate with impunity near the conflict zone in support of the attacks on the Islamic State. The advantage gained by the Kurds and Iraqi military through the persistent support of ISR and precision airstrikes would undoubtedly degrade and potentially defeat the Islamic State in its quest to create part of a “caliphate” in northern Iraq. It would also significantly impede the Islamic State’s ability to morph into a regional power.
And if the Islamic State were to respond by “hiding” within the civilian population (as the defeated Taliban once did) – a possibility that some have used to question to the effectiveness of airstrikes – that is certainly not a hallmark of success for any ground force.
Air power has proven effective time and again over the last few decades. It began with the no-fly zone over Bosnia in the early 1990s—and it has typically included humanitarian food airdrops to the civilian population (which began in northern Afghanistan the same day as the air campaign against the Taliban did, on Oct 7, 2001).
In April 1991, then President George H. W. Bush directed the United States military to begin delivering escorted humanitarian relief supplies in support of Kurds who had been pushed into the mountains of northern Iraq by Saddam’s forces. At the time, more than 1 million Kurds were threatened with death due to starvation, exposure and dysentery. Within 36 hours, U.S. and allied combat-escorted aircraft were delivering them food and water. That mission evolved into the northern no-fly zone and continued non-stop for more than 12 years, until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. A similarly successful southern no-fly zone was established shortly after the northern mission began, and the two zones operated concurrently and successfully for more than a decade.
The U.S. policy of containing Saddam and his forces to virtually the middle portion of Iraq was one of the most successful military missions in our nation’s history. At no time during those 10-plus years of no-fly zone operations did the United States or any of our allies (primarily the British) have any conventional troops on the ground as part of the operation.
The American population has become war weary, we’re told. True or not, that weariness is usually the result of continued ground operations demanding thousands of troops—like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet the American public has demonstrated a high tolerance for sustained, long-term air-power missions over the last two decades. That’s important, because this fight with Islamic extremists will go on for years, if not decades. Air power is not a one-stop solution. It cannot solve the political problems of the countries in which it is deployed, or defeat an enemy or offer stability all by itself. It is merely a tool. But it is not a tool to sneeze at, either. It can degrade and contain an adversary, and even give us the leverage to negotiate with potential allies from a stronger position.
The Islamic State is fighting an asymmetric war. Its aim is to use beheading videos, suicide bombings and other terroristic methods to put fear into the peoples it is trying to subjugate. The terrorists’ power lies in the fact that people know they have no rules or laws. We do operate according to rules and laws, of course, but our air power is more than capable of striking fear into America’s enemies. It is our asymmetric advantage—and as a psychological tool, that is no small thing.
Gen. Charles F. Wald (USAF ret.) is former deputy commander of U.S. European Command.
No comments:
Post a Comment