Warfare Given a New Face

The United States launched a new kind of war in the skies over Afghanistan on Sunday: one that combined precision missiles and airdrops of food--high-tech sticks and low-tech carrots--in a campaign to topple Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and deprive Osama bin Laden of his headquarters.

The shape of the airstrikes was familiar to those who have watched U.S. armed forces go to war during the past decade. The visible part of the war on terrorism began with precision bombing against air defenses and other military targets, much like the wars against Iraq in 1991 and Serbia in 1999.

But the addition of humanitarian aid airdrops within two hours of the first cruise missile strikes was an innovation. The one-sided conventional battle for Afghanistan’s airspace was coupled with a tougher unconventional battle for hearts and minds--not only in Afghanistan, but also across the entire Muslim world.

In a videotaped message, Bin Laden defiantly challenged the American strategy.

“This is going to be a different kind of conflict,” said Eliot A. Cohen of Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “Obviously the Afghans and the Taliban pose a different set of problems from earlier conflicts. . . . But you may be seeing some new approaches to strategy as well.”

To an unusual degree, President Bush and his aides have emphasized that they want to help Afghanistan’s people even as they wage war against the Taliban regime. They also have stressed that they have no dispute with Islam, which Bush has called “a good and peace-loving faith.”

“The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies,” Bush said Sunday. “The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people, and we are the friends of almost a billion worldwide who practice the Islamic faith.”

Thus, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, close-mouthed about most details of the airstrikes, was happy to provide the time the food drops were launched--about 11:20 p.m. in Afghanistan and the amount delivered--37,500 food packets.

The target appeared to be not only Afghans, but also the public in other Muslim countries, especially Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, whose governments’ support the United States hopes to keep.

But the principal adversary, terrorist leader Osama bin Laden, turned out to be skilled at that kind of warfare as well. Bin Laden suddenly appeared on the Arab world’s television screens Sunday with his own interpretation of events, in a videotape that appeared to have been made well before the missiles were launched but held in reserve for the event.

In the statement, Bin Laden’s first since the Sept. 11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he accused the United States of attacking Muslims in Iraq, Israeli-occupied Palestinian lands and Lebanon--and sought to turn Bush’s appeal to the Islamic world on its head.

“These events have divided the whole world into two sides. The side of believers and the side of infidels,” Bin Laden said. “Every Muslim has to rush to make his religion victorious. . . . To America, I say only a few words to it and its people: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad.”

The U.S. drops of food, medicine and other aid to civilians in Afghanistan, which has suffered not only two decades of war but also a year of drought and near-starvation, came along with leaflets and radio broadcasts to explain Bush’s purpose.

The humanitarian warfare has a practical purpose as well as a propaganda effect: U.S. officials acknowledge that they hope to incite a general uprising against the Taliban, with the aim of depriving Bin Laden and his lieutenants of their base of operations--without requiring U.S. forces to fight on the ground.

The U.S. armed forces have airdropped food aid before, most recently into Kosovo in 1999 and into Kurdish-populated areas of northern Iraq in 1992. But in those cases, the airdrops were straightforward responses to humanitarian emergencies, not pieces of a strategy to win the war.

“Afghanistan has been in a humanitarian crisis for a long time, but we haven’t worried about it much until now,” noted James Steinberg, deputy national security advisor for President Clinton. “All of a sudden it’s a major rationale for the airstrikes.”

In this case, the larger reaction of the Muslim world may be every bit as important as that inside Afghanistan. U.S. officials don’t expect the Taliban to pose an insuperable military challenge. But if the people of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia follow Bin Laden’s urgings and stage uprisings against their governments, the war against terrorism will become even more difficult.

“All wars are unpredictable, but it seems to me this one is more unpredictable than most,” said Cohen. “I can imagine a scenario in which the Taliban collapses in two weeks and Osama bin Laden’s corpse shows up on a street in Kandahar. But I can also imagine something that goes on for a long period of time,” especially if the battle spills over into Pakistan or other countries.

U.S. experts on the Muslim world gave the Bush administration generally high marks for incorporating humanitarian aid into its strategy, but said the impact is still uncertain.

“It allows him to communicate the idea that our concern for the Afghans is not just words, it’s deeds,” said John L. Esposito, a professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown University.

Still, warned Michael C. Hudson of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, hostility to the United States is widespread in the Muslim world and may not be blunted by airdrops of food in the midst of military actions.

“The administration is clearly bringing a great deal of care and intelligence to this message, but I don’t know whether it will succeed,” Hudson said. “There’s a deeply rooted antipathy to American policies out there, and it’s based on issues like Israel, Palestine and Iraq.”

Thus, these scholars warned, other Muslims may be equally concerned by two issues outside Afghanistan: continued U.S. support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians and continued suggestions from the Bush administration that it may soon target countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria.

“You can isolate the Taliban because nobody likes the Taliban,” said Esposito. “But if you suggest that you’re going to do the same thing to Syria and Iran, that looks like a drive for American hegemony--to make the United States the police force for the whole area--and people won’t agree.”

At the same time, they said, Bin Laden--viewed by most Muslims and Arabs as an extremist--has fashioned a surprisingly effective message.

“This guy is formidable,” said Hudson. “I know Arabs that are totally opposed to what he stands for who still say this guy knows how to give a speech, knows how to touch the right buttons. He’s emerging as a charismatic figure, a kind of Islamic Robin Hood.”

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Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this story.