US asks 'What next?' in Afghanistan

Northern Alliance advances took the US by surprise

		By Jonathan Marcus BBC defence correspondent

The collapse of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan has been dramatically faster than anyone would have predicted.

Only about 10 days ago, many United States commentators were talking about fighting through the winter prior to a spring offensive next year.

The hunt for Osama bin Laden is still on

But the rapid defeat of the Taleban has forced questions about the wider scope of the US anti-terrorist campaign back onto the agenda.

At the outset of this campaign the Bush administration defined the target as what they called "terrorism with a global reach".

Unseating the Taleban regime as a prelude to destroying al-Qaeda's infrastructure in Afghanistan was seen very much as stage one.

What might follow was not spelt out.

Public divisions

There were some rather public divisions within the Bush team about whether Iraq might be a future target.

But the prevailing view was that the next stage of the campaign should be played down in an effort to secure the backing of the broad coalition needed to prosecute operations against the Taleban.

The spectacular success of the Northern Alliance's offensive and the Taleban's rapid collapse mean that questions about "What next?" are again being asked.

US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has made it clear that the broad strategic goals of the US remain what they were at the outset.

Extend campaign

The aim, he says, is to pursue the al-Qaeda network not just in Afghanistan but also in some 60 other countries, including in the United States itself.

Paul Wolfowitz: A campaign against all global terrorist networks

But speaking in a television interview on Sunday, he reiterated that this was a campaign against all the global terrorist networks and the states that support terrorism.

Mr Wolfowitz has always been on the hawkish side of the US debate - eager to extend the boundaries of the campaign as broadly as possible.

Many would argue that the Afghan phase of this operation is still not over.

Osama Bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders have not yet been tracked down and US military operations on the ground are being stepped up.

But already the debate is underway in Washington about where the focus of the campaign should move to next.