Generals need to know where they're going

It is strange that the Bush administration, which began military action in Afghanistan with such bold words, should now be faltering about what to do next. Three weeks ago, America launched what some of us described as a firepower demonstration, to show its determination to punish the perpetrators of the 11 September atrocities. When the first bombers went in, intelligence about the enemy was sorely lacking. It was assumed this would improve. Instead, today, American aircraft have exhausted the supply of targets that would be thought worth bombing in any conventional campaign. Air attacks are continuing, partly to maintain pressure on the Taliban but chiefly to keep up the momentum of allied activity. No coherent plan seems to have been agreed to follow military gestures with meaningful action.

In Washington and at military headquarters in Florida, uncertainty persists about ground action. Having rejected the notion of sending a big army to Kabul, for excellent political and military reasons, the Americans are now debating how to pursue the Taliban and the terrorists with their special forces. Pinprick raids, of the kind they staged last weekend, are risky and of doubtful value, unless the attackers know exactly what they are going for. I believe the politicians, and perhaps also the generals, have allowed their thinking about goals to become muddled.

They are focusing on the Taliban because getting Osama bin Laden remains so problematic. Yesterday, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admitted as much.

Target intelligence remains the key weakness. The generals constantly remind the politicians that without reliable information, the best special forces in the world cannot achieve much. They simply risk their own lives operating at long range in bitterly hostile conditions. There are plenty of jokes going the rounds in Whitehall about the good old days a century ago when a ferocious bearded Afghan warrior would suddenly wink at an astonished British officer: "Last time I saw you, old boy, was in the bar of White's." The Afghan turns out to be Sandy Arbuthnot from the dear old house at Eton. The trouble is that all those Buchanesque veterans of The Great Game are in their graves. It will take years to reinvent them.

With winter coming on, American military opinion favours continuing to pound the Taliban from the air until something cracks. Once the Kabul regime falls, the allies can hope to send troops to find Bin Laden under more favourable circumstances, and today the Prime Minister announced our deployment of commandos and Special Forces. This policy, however, poses serious risks. Pakistan, under General Musharraf, is holding together better than some feared. But dangerous tensions persist in the country, which must worsen the longer the bombing goes on. Meanwhile, many people in the West feel confused about the coalition's objectives and increasingly uneasy about hi-tech bombing of primitive people.

The hawks say: we went through all this over Kosovo, yet in the end bombing forced the Serbs to pull out and toppled Milosevic's rule in Belgrade a few months later. They argue that the coalition must simply hold its nerve and keep telling the public it cannot expect quick results. The Taliban will eventually crumble. This is probably true. But how long is "eventually"? And how confident can we be, even with the aid of American bombing, that the rebel armies will be able to beat the Taliban on the ground? It seems possible that Mr Rumsfeld and other impatient voices in the Bush administration will insist on a swift and substantial ground commitment-simply because they conclude-that the Taliban cannot be toppled without it.

But this decision will be made in Washington, amid only modest consultation with America's allies. It must be frustrating for Tony Blair to be so constrained about what he can do and say publicly. For all America's warm words towards Britain, we remain immeasurably the junior partners in the bilateral relationship. Days of confusion preceded today's announcement that 1,000 British troops will be deployed.

The most serious longterm risk is that the "war against terrorism" will become bogged down in Afghanistan. No one disputes that several thousand al Qaeda followers are on the ground there. But Saudi Arabia also plays a critical part in the Bin Laden network. Some sort of crisis in Saudi seems likely, before we are much older. Iraq poses a grave long-term threat. At the very least, UN weapons inspectors must be forced back into the country, and allowed to monitor Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and bio-terrorism capabilities. If the West expends too much political and diplomatic capital on the Afghan campaign, it will be difficult afterwards to mobilise the will and resources to address other critical fronts.

Some of us continue to believe that changing regimes in Kabul could prove a long and debilitating distraction from pursuing international terrorism elsewhere. Western public opinion, never mind that of the Islamic world, will never stand for more than one military campaign at a time. Many British people who support military action want to be told much more clearly what the coalition is aiming to achieve. They deserve answers. Yet these cannot be forthcoming until the generals and politicians make up their own minds.

Wanting a quick outcome is not merely a reflection of media impatience and ignorance of the difficulties. Political and diplomatic difficulties are bound to mount, if the Afghan campaign drags on through the winter. I feel obliged to repeat the mantra some of us have been chanting for weeks: if the coalition gets Osama bin Laden, military action will gain a victory that echoes around the world. If it does not, then dress up the story how you like, Washington and its allies will have failed in the first campaign of the anti-terrorist struggle.

We seldom express sympathy for politicians, but right now they deserve it. The dilemmas and decisions they face in this new kind of crisis are exceptionally hard. Those of us who argued from the outset that we should not do nothing, merely because it was so hard to do something, should not waver in support for our governments. But it will be easier to give that support wholeheartedly when we can all clearly see what it is that we are supporting.