A Futile Fight?

For years the Soviet Union tried to hunt down and kill Ahmed Shah Massoud, a highly effective Afghani commander who had helped thwart the former superpower’s occupation of its downtrodden neighbor to the south. Soviet intelligence knew the rugged, barren mountain range where he roamed, and they had a fleet of jets and bombers employed to blow him to pieces. Yet the heralded Red Army could not find the legendary soldier, much less execute him.

“He was always able to outfox them,” says David Edwards, a leading American scholar on Afghanistan. “And if the Soviets were not able to capture him, and they bordered Afghanistan, imagine how difficult it will be for America to extricate bin Laden. The complexity of this is mind-boggling and quite frightening.”

A professor of anthropology and sociology at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., and an author of two books on Afghanistan, Edwards has lived off and on for three decades in the desolate and strangely beautiful country. There he has taught English in the capital city of Kabul, interviewed the nation’s vast refugee population across the Pakistani border, and traveled with the Mujahadin, the famed fighting force that repelled the Soviet Union more than a decade ago. In an interview with the Scene, he talked about the steep challenges ahead for the United States as it targets accused terrorist Osama bin Laden and possibly Afghanistan, where the fanatical leader is believed to be hiding.

“Most of the time he is in a mountain chain along the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Edwards says. “He has SUVs, pickup trucks, and may have access to helicopters. There is little government presence there, mostly independent tribes. And bin Laden has made deals with the tribes to allow him to stay there.”

Already, bin Laden has proven his ability to elude the United States and this country’s well-financed intelligence. In 1998, the U.S. military tried to kill bin Laden by launching missile attacks at his training bases, where he was believed to be hiding. That strategy not only met with failure, but it seemed to embolden him and burnish his larger-than-life reputation across the war-torn region.

And unfortunately, if long-distance missile strikes are probably futile, nearly all other possible strategies to target bin Laden are fraught with complications, Edwards says. Even in a best case scenario—if the ruling Taliban government agreed to turn him over—the tribes that protect bin Laden are unlikely to give him up. And if the United States were to attack Afghanistan with ground troops to root him out of the mountains, it might mobilize the Afghan people, who otherwise have no fondness for their oppressive government or the accused terrorist mastermind.

“A lot of Americans assume Afghans support bin Laden, and they don’t. They don’t even support their own government,” Edwards says of the autocratic Taliban regime known for its brutal treatment of women and violent interpretations of Islamic tenets. “But if the people of Afghanistan feel like they are under attack, they will protect bin Laden.”

When Edwards visited Afghanistan in 1995, a group of villagers killed a sheep for him. Knowing the value of a sheep, Edwards tried to stop them, but they insisted. The Afghans always have been friendly to him, he says. They provided him shelter and helped him with his research. But like any people, their kindness has bounds.

“The Afghans are tremendously generous people, but the invasion of a foreign power is guaranteed to incite them,” Edwards says. “They fought three wars against the British and won all three, they pushed the Soviets out, and were instrumental in the ultimate dismantling of the Soviet Union.”

Today, Afghanistan is a devastated, impoverished nation, having been the host country to two decades of warfare. According to Edwards, 60 percent to 70 percent of the country has been displaced, while nearly a quarter of the population has been killed. A recent Washington Post story noted that the nation has no sizable power grids, no vast military bases, no major bridges, or highway networks. In other words, it has nothing left to bomb.

In 1975, Afghanistan was a different country. That year, Edwards went to Kabul to teach English and soon “fell in love with the place.” The country, which seemed on the verge of prosperity at the time, reminded him of parts of Southern Colorado or the rural outskirts of Santa Fe, N.M.

“The terrain is very rugged, very rocky. For the most part it is bare of trees, except at the higher altitudes and along the many river valleys,” he says. “It’s like what you would imagine in a cowboy movie, only more rugged.”

In 1979, one year after a Marxist regime came to power in Afghanistan, the Soviet Union invaded to prop up the new government. Millions of Afghans fled to the Pakistani border. Between 1982 and 1984, Edwards spent time with many of the refugees. He also was able to study the Mujahadin, the resistance to the Soviets.