For the Afghans’ Sake, Don’t Stop the Bombing

A number of humanitarian organizations, including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Doctors Without Borders, have called for a bombing freeze to enable the delivery of food to millions of starving Afghans. However, there is a compelling reason why other aid groups have not: A premature cessation of bombing could exacerbate human suffering.

The success of a prolonged military campaign depends wholly on its timing and on what comes after it. The political vacuum that would result from clearing out the Taliban too quickly would only invite a replay of the warlordism and bloody ethnic marauding last seen in the early 1990s, much of it at the hand of one of the United States’ new friends, the Northern Alliance. This likely would result in a humanitarian crisis of catastrophic proportions.

Yet moving too slowly would prolong the restricted access to the estimated 7.5 million in danger of starving, freezing or succumbing to diseases easily treated. Experts fear that the displacement caused by any protracted bombing of heavily settled areas--where the Taliban prefer to hide themselves--could trigger as much as a 50% mortality rate among this desperate population.

The military thinking, as reported, is to secure such northern areas as Mazar-i-Sharif, which could then serve both as a food distribution center and staging area for airlifts to less readily accessible parts of Afghanistan.

Well before Sept. 11, Afghanistan under the Taliban suffered one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates, 18%. From 200,000 to 300,000 children died each year. An extraordinarily high rate of women died in childbirth--1,700 per 100,000--and the life expectancy for men was age 46. Fewer than 30% of Afghans had access to health care and only 12% to safe water, compared with 80% and 70%, respectively, in other developing nations.

The Taliban’s treatment and subjugation of women are notorious. Returning Afghan citizens to this abuse would countervail much of what the U.S. and its allies are trying to accomplish with their admittedly disruptive military campaign. Moreover, a simple bombing pause would not guarantee that any more aid would get through than is getting through now, particularly in light of the reported “taxing” and looting of aid deliveries by the Taliban and other bandits.

The United States cannot afford to repeat its mistake of a decade ago when it abandoned the Afghans after the Soviets pulled out. This time, the U.S. and its allies must rebuild Afghanistan and enable this relief-dependent people to get back on its feet and attain some degree of self-reliance. Humanitarian groups now decrying the bombing would be wise to focus on holding their respective governments to this postwar commitment.

After decades of war, compounded by three years of severe drought, the situation is indeed dire. And the civilian deaths caused by bombing errors may suggest that this latest war is only making matters worse. But stopping the bombing, however easy a slogan that might be, will not stop the hunger. To the contrary. Continuing the measured, U.S.-led military campaign--if pursued with disciplined targeting, concurrent diplomatic efforts to forge a new, broad-based, post-Taliban governing coalition and a comprehensive post-conflict program to rebuild Afghanistan--could hasten the day when Afghan men, women and children not only can sustain themselves but also begin to enjoy the most fundamental rights.