Two Views on Our Progress in Afghanistan

Colleagues: Two contrasting opinions by experts on the prognosis for our strategy in Afghanistan. The first is by former Marine and Ass’t Secretary of Defense, Bing West, who has been a consistent critic of the “population-centric” COIN strategy in Afstan, which he thinks—based on much time spent in the war zone at the tactical level—is going nowhere.

I have also included a very recent assessment by Brookings expert Mike O’Hanlon, just returned from Afstan on a visit with Marine General Amos. I had asked two respected associates to provide a more positive assessment in order to balance what some (including them) might perceive as my “negativity” toward the potential for a successful outcome there.

I asked them for a recommendation—hence the O’Hanlon piece, and for their thoughts on Bing’s viewpoint. They wrote:

(From a long time regional expert formerly with the CJCS) Ty, in answer to your request for a piece that is serious and more upbeat than Bing West’s pretty negative assessment, I would recommend Michael O’Hanlon’s analysis to contrast West’s incessant, and in my opinion, ill-conceived strategic-level criticism based upon tactical-level observations.  

This is from Mike O’Hanlon in NYT from Saturday, May 21st.  Mike just back from travels with USMC Commandant James Amos in the same locales that West traveled over a year ago.  Far better news and much more balance than presented by West.

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 (From an Afghan expert and professor), “Ty, on Bing West, I loved his battle stories … accept some of his recommendations … but he never connects the dots.  We are so kinetic and he pretends the soldiers are all drinking tea and that we are wasting huge amounts on nation building.  He is right that this is the Afghans to win.  Most reviews of his have been good.  Joe

One critic of extending our presence in Afghanistan reminds us of the true costs of doing so: “More than $7 billion a month, perhaps another thousand lives lost, and thousands of limbs gone forever.”

OK—You again be the judge. Below are West’s fairly negative and long assessment followed by O’Hanlon’s more upbeat viewpoint. Ty

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NATIONAL REVIEW             MAY 20, 2011

A Thousand Years Away                                   

American valor, Afghan vacillation

BY BING WEST

Sangin District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan

In late March, I rejoined the platoon whose maneuvers I had described (With the Warriors) in the National Review. To reach the platoon, I first checked in at the operations center of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. While there, I watched the deaths of two insurgents. A real-time video feed from an overhead aircraft showed a motorcyclist and his passenger, carrying a pickaxe and bulging sack, driving past a crowded market in Sangin District. They stopped on an open strip of road, where one man hacked out a shallow hole. The other then placed an improvised explosive device (IED) in the hole. Minutes later, a Hellfire missile killed them both.

While the air strike was routine, the location was disturbing. In Sangin, the United States and its coalition partners had spent millions of dollars to provide electric power, schools, clinics, and roads. Yet the bombers on the motorcycle had driven brazenly through the market, unafraid of betrayal by those the coalition had aided for years.

The next day, when I reached the 3rd Platoon of Kilo Company, the troops were still living in cave-like rooms inside an abandoned compound. The big news since my last visit was the blimp tethered above Kilo Company’s outpost down the road. Its cameras streamed video night and day into the company’s two-desk command post. The Taliban, wary of the all-seeing eye in the sky too high to shoot down, had pulled back a few miles, to the annoyance of the 3rd Platoon. After half a year of steady combat, the men were wearing down, most having lost 10 to 15 pounds. They joked that the Taliban were inconsiderate.

“We have to walk farther to get into a fight,” Lt. Vic Garcia told me.

Before we left on patrol, the platoon gathered for a group photo. Since October, the 3rd Platoon had evacuated an average of one casualty per week — and they had one more week to go before deploying back to the States. 3^rd platoon was a tight-knit band of warriors who, knowing they faced more casualties, were stolidly purposeful. For them, there was no backing off.

As we left the wire, Cpl. Colbey Yazzie unslung his Vallon metal detector and moved ahead to take point. An unassuming Navajo with a warm smile, Yaz was the platoon’s talisman, having discovered and detonated over 40 IEDs buried in the fields.

“How do you do it day after day, Yaz?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he grinned. “Just habit, I guess.”

“That’s not it, dude,” Sgt. Philip McCulloch said. “You’re awesome, man, the best in the battalion.”

As Yaz began to sweep back and forth, a dozen Marines fell into a single file behind him. Across Helmand Province, hundreds of similar patrols were on the move. Home to about 1.3 million Pashtuns, Helmand is a vast, flat desert interrupted by a few rivers fed by snowfields to the north. Most of the population lives in the Green Zone, a system of canals that sustains fertile farm fields along the banks of the rivers.

Near the patrol base, shepherds were tending cows and sheep, a sign they expected no attack by Taliban gangs. Several men rushed up to us, demanding payment for vague claims of battle damage. Every American battalion has millions of dollars to spend on local projects, and most farmers wanted a cut. We have created an Afghan culture of entitlement rather than self-reliance.

We walked past a farm compound that had been shattered by a bomb strike. Three waifs stood solemnly in the rubble. In a small field next to the compound, their father was scattering seed among poppy plants. He refused to look at the Marines.

Next to a fording point across a stream, Yaz found and cut a thick white electric wire. Buried somewhere close by was a plastic jug of explosives. One end of the wire led toward a compound where several women and children huddled nervously. After marking the spot for later examination by ordnance experts, Lieutenant Garcia gestured to Yaz to push on. The triggerman was long gone and there wasn’t any sense upsetting the women.

In its seven-month deployment, the 3rd Platoon had encountered over a hundred IEDs. The farming community knew the identity of the men who planted the mines. Out of fear, conviction, or both, the farmers remained silent.

Farther on, small groups of men glared at us. The white flag of the Taliban defiantly fluttered over an abandoned farmhouse. Out in the fields, farmers, women, and children hastened to shelter, a signal that the enemy lurked nearby. Staying in file, the Marines knelt and prepared to return fire. The sniper assigned to cover Yaz’s back scanned the empty fields to the front with binoculars. Garcia radioed the mortar crew back at base to stand by. When a helicopter gunship flew over for a look, McCulloch testily told the pilot to leave the area lest the Taliban be afraid to open fire.

The patrol wanted to fight. They measured themselves by how many enemy they killed. After waiting a half hour and getting no action, they returned to base.

***

After accompanying the 3rd Platoon on a few more patrols, I moved on. Three days after I left, Sgt. Dominic Esquibel, the 1st Squad leader, stepped on a mine. In the Iraqi battle for Fallujah, Esquibel had won the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor, but he refused to wear it because he wanted no personal recognition. He had stayed on active duty for one last tour in order to watch over his squad in Afghanistan. When I talked to him in the hospital, he was fighting to keep his right foot.

“I thank God it was me,” he said, “rather than one of my men.”

The next day, Yaz lost his right leg, and Corpsman Redmond Ramos sustained severe injuries trying to aid him.

“The IED maker had been watching me,” Yaz told me from his hospital room. “He set three mines. When I knelt to disarm one, another blew up under me. He was real smart.”

And he was real protected by the Pashtun code of silence. Maj. Gen. Richard Mills, commander of the 22,000 Marines in Helmand during March, said the Taliban “have lost the support of the people within the province.” Perhaps. But the villagers remained silent about who among them were sowing the fiendish mines. Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, has referred to the population as “professional chameleons,” providing support first to one side, then to another. This is understandable. A survey in Helmand and Kandahar last summer found that 71 percent believed the Taliban would return once the American forces left.

Kilo and the other companies of Battalion 3-5 had killed several hundred Taliban, and captured 80. The slipshod Afghan criminal system sentenced 15 of them to prison for at least a year; the other 65 were released or received token sentences. Every month in Afghanistan, there are about 1,400 IED attacks, requiring the collusion of many thousands of farmers. Yet fewer than 3,000 Taliban are being held in Afghan or coalition prisons, compared with 24,000 insurgents imprisoned in Iraq at the peak of the surge there in 2007. Most Taliban who are detained quickly walk free. On a per capita basis, Sweden has a higher prison population than does Afghanistan.

The 3rd Platoon went to Sangin with 53 troops and concluded their seven-month tour with 25 killed, missing limbs, or otherwise wounded and evacuated to the States. It took raw grit to patrol day after day, knowing that a large number of them would not return in one piece — or, in some cases, at all.

“The only way of approaching a war like this,” Garcia said, “is to block out the hurt. I tell my squad leaders they have to be the best. The skipper [Capt. Nick Johnson, the company commander] tells us we have to be the best company. Same attitude across the battalion. You compete to be the toughest. Never let the Taliban feel they have the upper hand.”

The platoon’s parent unit — the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Marine Regiment — had suffered the heaviest losses (30 killed) of any battalion in the ten-year war. What was gained? They had broken the long-held control of the Taliban over Sangin District. What comes next? In March, Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Sangin to congratulate the Marines there for having “killed, captured, or driven away most of the Taliban.” He told reporters that a strategy was in place “to actually put us on the path to success.”

***

The strategy Gates mentioned consisted of four tasks. The first two are summarized as “clear and hold.” Across Afghanistan, each day nearly a thousand American platoons like Garcia’s sally forth through mine-laced fields and roads, waiting for enemies not in uniform to shoot first, so the platoon can fire back. This is a defensive, grind-it-out tactic based on attrition, and, as stated above, it has greatly degraded the Taliban’s capabilities, effectively clearing their fighters out of many districts.

That doesn’t necessarily deny the Taliban control of the population — the “hold” part. One obstacle is the rules of engagement: Out of respect for the culture, American troops do not enter farm compounds. They also do not patrol at night, when they cannot detect IEDs. And because the Taliban do not wear uniforms, they can live near an American base — as long as their neighbors do not betray them.

The current plan is to continue this approach for four more years while gradually withdrawing our forces. The approach can work, given enough time, money, and troops. In 2010, 499 Americans were killed; in 2011, the intensity of fighting portends a similar loss. The financial bill will be above $100 billion for the year.

“Clear and hold” cannot succeed by itself, both because the American troops are foreigners and because the math doesn’t add up. There are fewer than a thousand American outposts to secure 7,000 Pashtun villages. The Taliban wander in and out of the villages as frequently as American units do. At some point, the Afghan soldiers (most of whom are not Pashtuns) will have to fight their war without us. So, according to Gates, the third part of the strategy is to expand “the Afghan national security forces to the point where they can handle a degraded Taliban threat.”

Attrition can degrade and demoralize an enemy force, but today the Taliban still enjoy a sanctuary in Pakistan that is 1,500 miles in length. After Osama bin Laden was killed, Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader responsible for thousands of coalition deaths, remained snug and secure inside Pakistan. Although Taliban losses in districts like Sangin have been severe, the madrassas, or Islamist schools, in Pakistan provide a stream of zealous Taliban recruits. It is unclear when the attrition by American forces inside Afghanistan will exceed the replacement rate from Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the Afghan police remain unreliable, while Afghan-army battalions sustain extremely high turnover rates. We have scant leverage to insist upon promotions based on merit instead of bribes and tribal contacts. In Sangin, most of the Afghan soldiers tagged along in the formation, while Marines like Yazzie cleared the way. Put plainly, we won’t know whether the Afghan forces can stand up to the Taliban until our forces have withdrawn. But it is not until the end of 2014 — four more years — that Afghan security forces are expected to take over the combat mission.

Apart from clearing out the Taliban by attrition tactics, denying them control of the population, and building up the Afghan forces, there is a fourth task for our battalions, called the “hold and build” phase. Our counterinsurgency doctrine states that “soldiers and marines are expected to be nation-builders as well as warriors.” That expectation has proved far too ambitious, if not downright arrogant. The 12 million Pashtun tribesmen whom our soldiers “secure and serve” — to use General Petraeus’s term — have remained steadfastly neutral, while accepting every dollar we give them.

Soldiers, not villagers, win battles. Our core mission must be to instill in the Afghan soldiers the belief that they can crush the Taliban. That’s not an impossible task. Today, the Marines have largely cleared Helmand, where for four years the Taliban had been viewed as invincible. The next step is to gradually move the Afghan soldiers into the front. Every American battalion commander, however, knows the serious defects in the Afghan army and does not want to risk failure by pulling back too quickly.

There is a path to accelerating the handover: Bulk up our adviser teams while reducing our conventional forces. Shift from protecting a neutral population to cultivating a fighting spirit in the Afghan army. Every day, Afghan soldiers accompany American soldiers on patrol; they are useful at spotting the Taliban, after which the Americans conduct the battle. The Afghans can be put in the lead if we replace 700-man U.S. battalions with 200-man adviser units that have adequate combat power and experienced leaders.

The surge of American troops has shattered the momentum of the Taliban. It’s unlikely they can regain that momentum. On May 15, Defense Secretary Gates said: “We’ve turned a corner, because of the Taliban being driven out and kept out. . . . Military pressure could create the circumstances for reconciliation.” One precedent is our Vietnam-era negotiations with the North Vietnamese, although they did not work out so well.

The central question remains: Why are we fighting, if the Taliban — unlike al-Qaeda — are not a terrorist threat to U.S.?

No strategy is risk-free. But since the secretary of defense has chosen to emphasize “reconciliation,” it is time to begin a quiet, steady withdrawal of our combat units. Karzai may cut an opaque deal with the Taliban, whom he refuses to call an enemy. If he does, it will signal that a decade of fighting by brave Americans like Yaz was due to a simple misunderstanding among Afghan brothers. As happened after Vietnam, a generation of American soldiers and Marines will then question the wisdom of their seniors who insisted upon the Sisyphean strategy of nation building in a tribal country 7,000 miles and a thousand years away.

(Mr. West, a former assistant secretary of defense, served with the Marines in Vietnam. He is the author, most recently, of The Wrong War: Grit, Strategy, and the Way Out of Afghanistan.) 

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Finally, a Fighting Force

By MICHAEL E. O’HANLON

IN the last two weeks, an Afghan police officer killed two American Marines in Helmand Province, and another killed a British soldier after a dispute over a soccer match. Last month, an Afghan military pilot killed nine American military trainers after an argument at a meeting in Kabul.

None of the killers seem to have been Taliban infiltrators, but that alone is not terribly reassuring. The United States’ exit strategy for the war in Afghanistan depends largely on the performance, competence and trustworthiness of the Afghan security forces, and critics of the mission view such episodes as evidence that the Afghan forces are generally unreliable — ineffectual in combat and too often unmotivated, erratic or corrupt. The issue looms over President Obama’s decision about troop reductions in Afghanistan, which he is expected to announce by July.

But there is reason to be hopeful. I was in Helmand Province last week, traveling with Gen. James F. Amos, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and despite the recent setbacks and other problems, my impression of today’s Afghan security forces was encouraging.

Helmand Province, for years a Taliban stronghold, has in the past year or so seen remarkable progress. Almost all of the populated parts of the province are now under the control of the Afghan government and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

The region is not completely safe, to be sure. But most major roads are serviceable, and government officials now generally use them instead of NATO helicopters to get around. Markets are open; schools have increased almost 50 percent in number since late 2009; twice as many Afghan officials work in local governments as did a year ago; and poppy production is down.

The even better news is that Afghan forces deserve an increasingly large share of the credit. The message from the Marines and British soldiers I spoke to in the province was one of growing appreciation for the skills and fighting spirit of Afghan soldiers and police officers.

Last year in southern Afghanistan, Afghans made up about half of all the combined forces used to clear the region of most Taliban weapons caches and strongholds. According to the International Security Assistance Force, roughly two-thirds of all Afghan Army battalions nationwide now score at least a 3 on a military-readiness scale from 1 to 5, meaning that while they still require outside help, they are quite effective when conducting missions with NATO troops.

Police and army pay is now adequate by national standards, and local recruiting goals for the Afghan Army and police in Helmand Province have been largely met this spring for the first time since the war began. Desertion rates are still too high, and Afghan troops too often overstay their military leaves, but the trends point in the right direction.

During my travels, several Marine officers who also had experience in Iraq told me that Afghan police officers and soldiers were better fighters than their Iraqi counterparts. Routinely, in towns like Musa Qala that are still tense, Afghans provide half the personnel on most foot patrols — and I was told that they do not shrink from fighting when they run into trouble.

I heard many anecdotes that spoke to the growing effectiveness of the Afghan forces. Recently, for instance, in the town of Marja, intelligence indicated the presence of Taliban forces in the vicinity. An Afghan unit responsible for that sector leaped into action. A few hours later it returned with Taliban captives.

The unit’s American partners told me that they would have preferred more of a plan — the Afghan forces were somewhat reckless in their response. But the important point was that the Afghans did not avoid combat or expect NATO soldiers to do their fighting for them.

Does this mean the United States should prepare for an immediate drawdown of troops?

No. What I saw and heard in Helmand Province supports the exit strategy — but not for this summer or fall.

An American commander told me that in his estimation, after an area is first cleared of the Taliban, NATO can substantially draw down its forces there 24 to 30 months later. That gives NATO enough time to recruit and train Afghan Army and police units, allows Afghan citizens to gain confidence that the Taliban is not coming back and gives the civilian government a chance to get off the ground. The time frame implies significantly reduced NATO forces in southern Afghanistan by next year.

In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s death, many Americans have argued that the country should cut its losses in Afghanistan and bring our troops home. But while the United States does need a better political and diplomatic strategy for the mission (in particular, for dealing with Kabul and Islamabad), this is not the time to jettison a military strategy that has finally hit its stride.

Michael E. O’Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/opinion/21ohanlon.html

The Reno Gazette Journal, May 8, 2011

The modified MH-60 helicopters lifted off from a US base in eastern Afghanistan last Sunday, bound for a heavily guarded mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan, just 35 miles north of the capital, Islamabad. Aboard were members of the elite Special Operations Command (SOCOM) forces, the famed Navy “SEAL Team 6”. Their mission—to capture, or more likely, to kill, the long sought leader of Al Qaeda and the mastermind of the 9/11 strikes against the World Trade Center, Osama Bin Laden (OBL).

The helicopters were in essence stealth counterparts of the more well known F-22 and F-117 fighters and B-2 bomber. Equipped with advanced radar-avoidance and suppression equipment, the helos ferried the Navy SEALs in undetected by Pakistani air defenses and penetrated the heavily guarded compound. SEAL Team 6 seized the building floor by floor, killing 22 and finding Osama himself on the third floor in bed with a lady who was likely his 5^th wife.

Bin Laden resisted and fulminated, unarmed but with an AK-47 and pistol within reach. He was shot twice, once in the head, and the mythical leader of the Islamic Jihad was dead. Presumably by now OBL is with the fabled 72 virgins in heaven.

One helo malfunctioned and had to be destroyed, apparently because it had too much weight to navigate in the narrow compound. There are photos circulating of the heavily modified Blackhawk chopper with highly unusual design characteristics never seen before (except to those who may have seen them in test missions in the Nevada desert!). The SEALs seized numerous computers and associated equipment and at least one hostage, and got them and the team out on the other choppers.

The U.S. considered other alternatives, ranging from a B-2 strike, a cruise missile assault, or a Predator unmanned drone. None would have brought proof of the charismatic leader’s demise. An insertion of DELTA or SEALs could capture or kill Osama, but that was an extremely risky alternative. CIA Director Leon Panetta said many of his Agency operatives worried about a repeat of the disastrous “Desert One” failed hostage rescue operation in the Carter Administration.

The Joint Special Operations Command team, composed of elements from the Army and Navy, carried out the operation without a glitch. They killed or neutralized OBL’s security team and suffered no casualties. Brilliantly conducted!

Did the White House and the CIA want Osama Bin Laden taken alive?

Bin Laden was killed in the assault when he apparently refused capture. Some critics have suggested that the killing was in violation of the laws of warfare. Nonsense, bin Laden was a combatant, there was a fierce firefight in the house—floor by floor encounters—he resisted capture, and was killed. Unless you were in that hostile environment, in the middle of the night, and with confusion reigning—don’t try to second guess the SEALs.

He certainly was given more of an opportunity to surrender than were the nearly 3,000 killed on 9/11! He was certainly given a more proper burial than were many of those killed in the World Trade Center. Shed no tears!.

Some have speculated in the media that this was a “kill only” mission. (One wag said the phrase the team most repeated was, “He resisted!”.) Maybe, makes sense. Can you imagine the circus that would have emanated from a Nuremburg-type show trial? His every word a rallying call for the Jihadists? Either way, we are far better off with OBL dead.

The burial was also run with precision and in accordance with Islamic tradition and traditional decorum. The body was identified, cleansed, and prepared for burial wrapped in white cloth. His personal effects were gathered. The body was transferred to a military vessel and buried at sea.

Deep sea burial was also appropriate and I make no allusion to him serving as shark fodder here. Having OBL buried on land somewhere could have created a shrine, a Mecca for terrorists.

The Administration has also decided, at least for now, not to release the photos of the dead and badly disfigured bin Laden. Another good decision—no sense having revolting pictures also serve as a platform for anti-American sensibilities, especially in the Muslim world.

Where does credit belong for this successful operation?

The much maligned Intelligence community for starters. Yes, we can all say that taking 10 years to locate such a well known figure is a serious black mark. And to have him turn up in a mansion near the capital and next door to the Pakistani military academy, instead of living a harsh life in a dark cave in the tribal areas. Not good.

However, once the intelligence was secured, the cooperation between the CIA, the JSOC, the National Security Agency, and the National Geospatial Agency, was superb. And having gained confidence that we knew where bin Laden was located, the CIA’s paramilitary forces and the Special Operations teams conducted numerous training exercises to hone their skills for the assault, which was conducted perfectly.

So how did we gain the critical intelligence? Well, the trail begins at Guantanamo, where harsh interrogation (yes, including waterboarding) techniques led to information that the key to finding OBL was to track the movements of his most trusted couriers, the top one being Al-Kuwaiti. While some feel these interrogation measures helped but were not critical, I would disagree. The information obtained by these harsh measures was, indeed, critical.

Pakistan—Trusted Ally or Duplicitous Adversary?

It is inconceivable that Pakistani intelligence could be so incompetent not to know that Osama bin Laden had been residing for years in an affluent suburb not far from the capital. Clearly that was the conclusion American officials had reached, since they took extensive measures not to inform the Paks that they knew of OBL’s whereabouts and certainly not that they intended to raid the house he was living in. Leon Panetta was most blunt, saying, “It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardize the mission. They might alert the targets”.

Such distrust will have important ramifications, for a relationship that had already been subject to numerous fissures. Having said that, the fact is that we remain deeply dependent on the Paks for logistical, intelligence and counter-terrorism cooperation. Our primary lines of communication and resupply to Afghanistan run through the country and we have few alternatives to those routes. We need the Paks to deny safe havens and sanctuaries to the Taliban and other insurgents, a mission Islamabad has undertaken with mixed results. We need the Pak intelligence agency—the ISI—to stop nurturing terrorist groups, whether targeted on India or on US forces. That hasn’t gone real well either.

And we need to consider the consequences of Pakistan, with more than 200 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, becoming another failed state.

Pakistan, in turn, regards the US as a fickle friend, one that will turn against them as soon as this conflict is over, as we did after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. We dropped them like a hot potato then, and again when they became a nuclear power, and Islamabad feels that we will have no hesitation in abandoning them in favor of a closer relationship with India. They are probably right.

What is the Impact on President Obama and his Counter-Terrorism Policies?

The highly dangerous but very successful operation has provided the President with a major bump in the polls, but then so did Desert Storm for President George H.W. Bush back in 1991. He then lost the 1992 election to the relatively unknown Bill Clinton, because of “The Economy, Stupid”! If gas and food prices continue to rise and unemployment remains high, the bump provided by this incursion will not last long.

The operation also highlighted what many observers haven’t appreciated—how aggressive Obama and his national security team have become in conducting the “war on terrorism”. The “national-building, population-centric, drink three cups of tea” approach to combating the Afghan insurgency has given way to a more “kinetic” and highly risky strategy. Obama, and especially Panetta, have been relying increasingly on special operations and paramilitary forces. The Administration has dramatically increased the number of drone attacks, against militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and has killed more than 1500 top insurgent leaders.

Some critics say the Obama team prefers to kill insurgents rather than capture and interrogate them, and have charged that the use of armed drones against these individuals amounts to “targeted assassinations”.

And there have been civilian casualties, albeit nothing like the Taliban likes to claim. Despite the best efforts of the operators, there have been instances of “collateral damage”—including the deaths of innocent civilians.

Obama has decided to keep the Guantanamo prison open, reversing a campaign promise, a wise choice considering there is really no alternative. The Obama administration also halted what threatened to be a witch hunt against intelligence community interrogators, a move that provided great relief for Agency personnel involved in the “harsh interviews”. Score a big win here for Panetta over AG Eric Holder!

Will the death of Osama bin Laden lead to accelerated withdrawals?

For the short term the operation will defuse the growing frustration with the seemingly endless conflict in Afghanistan. That will be short lived. The removal of bin Laden will be considered a major transition point. On the one hand the operation will enhance US prestige in the region. This will allow the President to argue that the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces can proceed on schedule, because such a drawdown will be conducted “from a position of strength”.

For Al Qaeda, the bin Laden era is over and whatever influence he exerted from his comfortable bedroom will be only a memory. The global Jihadist movement will have lost a charismatic figure, but the truth is that the Al Qaeda that OBL oversaw essentially has been a spent force for years.

The anti-American and anti-democratic forces in the Islamic regions remain strong, however, and while lacking a central controlling organ, are increasingly powerful in the Arab world. The challenge will be to assist the nascent democratic revolutions now taking place, while preventing the better organized and more ideological forces from seizing power as the traditional autocracies fade away.

There will be no respite for the forces of good!

–Tyrus W. Cobb served as Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan for National Security Affairs from 1983-89. COL/Dr. Dick Hobbs also contributed to this article.

The first report summarizes the perspective of GEN Dave Petraeus, who has briefed reporters in-country frequently of late, painting an optimistic picture of the progress made in Afghanistan before he travels to Washington to testify next week.

The second post, from a solid observer, Joshua Foust, questions how much progress is really being made, what differences the tactical successes will make, and how much of a difference it will make given U.S. intentions to begin drawing down soon. The third is a strong response to Foust from Tom Lynch (COL-USA/Ret), who recently left the Chairman’s office to take a position at the National Defense University. (COL Lynch’s rejoinder is reprinted with his permission). Tom is a firm believer that progress is being made, that we have the strategy right, and that the Taliban has been weakened significantly (given his former position–and, of course, that he was a student of mine at West Point!–his views should be taken seriously).

Finally, a link to an analysis by C.J. Chivers in today’s NYT of the disconnect between what tactical progress US units have made and the lack of same at the strategic level, which gives rise to frustration that whatever sacrifices and progress US forces are making on the ground, it will be for naught if the Afghan government remains incompetent and corrupt and the Afghan Army/police are not capable of holding the successes achieved on the ground.

– Ty

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Petraeus Sees Military Progress in Afghanistan

By CARLOTTA GALL

KABUL, Afghanistan — Besides well-reported advances in southern provinces, American andNATO forces have also been able to halt or reverse Taliban gains around the capital, Kabul, and even in the north and west of the country, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said Tuesday.

The general made his case for an improving overall picture in Afghanistan in an interview, offering a preview of what is likely to be his argument next week when he testifies before Congress for the first time since he took over command of coalition forces in Afghanistan eight months ago.

It will also be his first testimony since the influx of additional American and Afghan troops began to change the balance of the fighting in southern Afghanistan in late 2010.

Under General Petraeus, the tempo of operations has been stepped up enormously. American Special Operations forces and coalition commandos have mounted more than 1,600 missions in the 90 days before March 4 — an average of 18 a night — and the troops have captured and killed close to 3,000 insurgents, according to information provided by the general.

“The momentum of the Taliban has been halted in much of the country and reversed in some important areas,” he said.

“The Taliban have never been under the pressure that they were put under over the course of the last 8 to 10 months,” he added.

Other aspects of the war remain difficult, and progress is patchy and slow, General Petraeus conceded. There has been only modest momentum on efforts to persuade Taliban fighters to give up the fight and join a reintegration program, and a plan to train and install thousands of local police officers in rural communities to mobilize resistance to the Taliban has proved to be a painstaking business constrained by concerns that it will create militias loyal to warlords.

But security in and around Kabul has significantly improved, he said, thanks in part to specialized commando units of the Afghan Army, the police and the intelligence service, which operate in the greater Kabul area.

In 2009, Kabul was encircled by Taliban forces and there was talk of the capital’s falling to the insurgents, but now much of the greater Kabul area has been secured, he said.

President Hamid Karzai is to announce on the Afghan New Year, March 21, the beginning of the transition to Afghan control of some districts around the country, part of the plan to pass responsibility for security to the Afghan government by 2014.

The Taliban are expected to try to retake lost territory in coming months, and in particular to single out those districts in transition, the general said. But he said coalition forces would mount their own spring offensive to pre-empt Taliban efforts to retake lost territory.

“You cannot eliminate all the sensationalist attacks,” he said. “That is one of the objectives for our spring offensive — to solidify those gains and push them back further.”

Over the past four months, coalition forces have seen a fourfold increase in the number of weapons and explosives caches found and cleared, in large measure because the Taliban were forced out of territory they had held for up to five years, he said.

“The Taliban had to leave hastily, and the fighters and leaders were killed, captured or run off, and if they were run off they could not cart off all the I.E.D. and weapons and explosives that they had established over five years in some cases,” the general said, referring to improvised explosive devices.

Troops were finding more than 120 explosives and weapons caches a month recently compared with 40 a month a year ago, according to information from the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan provided by the general.

Destroying the infrastructure the Taliban had built up over the years, including field hospitals, weapons stores, bomb-making factories, safe houses and even detention facilities, would make it harder for them to regain the territory, he said. “Not having those will make their job more difficult this spring,” he said.

Many of the Taliban leaders and fighters had escaped to sanctuaries in Pakistan, he said, and coalition forces would focus in coming months on a strategy called “defense and depth,” blocking their return through strategic border regions that the insurgents traditionally used, namely in southern Helmand, eastern Kandahar and eastern Nangarhar Provinces, where Afghanistan borders Pakistan, and preventing them from regaining control of their old havens in Afghanistan.

As Afghanistan braces for an increase in fighting that traditionally occurs in the spring, however, tensions over civilian casualties have flared again, after an episode in eastern Afghanistan last week when American helicopter gunners killed nine boys collecting firewood.

A time lag between the sighting of a group of insurgents by ground forces and the relay of the information to a helicopter attack team led to the deaths, the general said, citing a preliminary inquiry. The attack team believed that the group of boys was the group of insurgents, he said.

“They thought they saw the same group but did not, and there was a gap in time before the final positive identification from the ground force until the handoff to the weapons team,” he said. “Beyond a human tragedy, it was a terrible and tragic mistake.”

That episode on March 1 came soon after a more controversial attack in the same region that the Afghan government said killed 65 civilians on Feb. 17. Mr. Karzai rejected General Petraeus’s earlier explanation that the victims were Taliban fighters, and he refused to accept his apology on Sunday for the deaths of the nine boys.

President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates have also apologized to Mr. Karzai and the Afghan people for the deaths.

“This kind of event does clearly undermine the trust between the Afghan government and ISAF, and more important, between the Afghan people and ISAF,” General Petraeus conceded. The full investigation was nearly complete, he said, and a review had been ordered of the tactical directive given to troops. He declined comment on the Feb. 17 episode.

Despite the flare-up, relations with President Karzai were good, the general insisted. The two meet several times a week, including for one-on-one meetings. “We have open and forthright conversations with one another,” he said.

Over all, he noted, civilian casualties caused by Afghan and coalition forces had declined in 2010 by about 20 percent from the previous year, which he said was “impressive” given the deployment of 100,000 more Afghan and coalition troops and the increase in operations in 2010.

A United Nations report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan to be released Wednesday would show the majority — 75 percent — of civilian casualties in 2010 were caused by Taliban and insurgent attacks, he said.

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From Joshua Foust:

For my column this week at PBS, I wrote a roundup of recent stories of progress in the war in Afghanistan, and mused on what they really mean.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/voices/the-numbers-game-in-afghanistan/7838/

The numbers game in Afghanistan

Proponents of the surge point to encouraging stats, but what do these numbers really mean?

March 8, 2011

This week, Defense Secretary Bob Gates made a surprise trip to Afghanistan. His first meetings were dominated by the latest row over civilian casualties — more than 200 civilians have been killed in the past few weeks, many at the hands of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). But there was a bigger reason behind Gates’ visit: to evaluate the war’s progress.

At first glance, the news out of Afghanistan appears to be upbeat: the war’s progress has been so encouraging, Gates told reporters, that the July 2011 drawdown might actually happen — sort of. The actual numbers of troops sent home, he explained, will probably be small, since there needs to be a sizable U.S. presence left over to combat the insurgency in the south and east of the country.

The number of U.S. troops in the country will peak this year. And there is a growing body of statistics to back up what these troops have accomplished: USA Today reports that nearly 900 “Taliban commanders” have been killed or captured in the last 10 months; thousands of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), have been seized; and nearly 10,000 pounds of opium have been impounded. The numbers sound impressive, but they also raise substantial questions.

One is what ISAF hopes to achieve by arresting or killing the mid-level leaders of the insurgency. Andrew Exum, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, thinks this effort could be a key to success there because of how it might degrade the insurgency’s effectiveness. “We will see the strategic effectiveness of those efforts, or lack thereof … when the fighting in Afghanistan picks up again in the spring and summer,” he explained.

But it remains unclear what ISAF means when it designates someone a commander — that is, what number of fighters that leader is responsible for and what the strategic effect of taking him off the battlefield will be. The Afghan Ministry of Defense recently estimated that there are upwards of 30,000 Taliban fighters active in Afghanistan. Did the 900 recently killed or detained commanders play an important role within the insurgency, and does removing such a modest number really affect the our efforts there?

The other numbers ISAF touts raise similar questions. Are we really changing the equation when we impound a few hundred RPG rounds in a country awash in weapons? And does our seizing of 10,000 pounds of opium in a country that produces almost 8 million pounds per year really amount to a significant achievement?

From a distance, it is difficult to understand what the massive escalation of U.S. troops was meant to accomplish. It’s important to remember that there will never be as many U.S. troops in that country as there are now. And this is still winter, when violence traditionally abates as Taliban fighters vacation in Pakistan. Yet the violence, mostly in the south, where the surge was concentrated, has never been stronger. According to statistics compiled by Indicium Consulting, the first two months of 2011 were 60 percent more violent than the same period in 2010 (again, concentrated in the south). A recent Washington Post story noted that violence in the east of Afghanistan, which also received a big share of surge troops, is up 21 percent.

There are other discouraging indicators. Incidents involving improvised explosive devices known as IEDs, which are the biggest killer of U.S. troops and Afghan civilians, have not been retarded by the surge. Wired recently reported that the number of IED explosions have remained more or less constant since June 2010 — despite the so-called “winter lull” in Taliban fighting. Afghan civilian casualties — touted in 2009 as the primary indicator of success in the counterinsurgency — are at an all-time high. Worse still, there is mounting evidence that both ISAF and the Afghan government are actively working to suppress reporting on civilian casualties.

In fact, it’s difficult to reconcile the official reports of “successful” operations — the growing number of detained or killed Taliban commanders, escalating opium seizures, and so on — with the larger statistical picture of the war.Some analysts have tried to explain away the more discouraging indicators as the last gasp of a dying movement (essentially accusing the Taliban of throwing a mortar tantrum because they’re losing). But the latest Afghan surge of troops is now more than a year old, if judged from when Marines were first deployed in December 2009. This stands in stark contrast to the Iraq surge: At the eight-month mark in September 2007, General David Petraeus reported to Congress that there was a noticeable and substantial reduction in violence(pdf). There is no similar trend in Afghanistan.

One is left to conclude that either the statistics we use to gauge our effectiveness in the war in Afghanistan are meaningless (because we are actually winning the fight) or that the leaders in the military are spinning the numbers to paint a different reality than the one unfolding on the ground. Neither scenario inspires much confidence in our ability to accurately define or declare victory in this war.

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Joshua:

Why this untenable claim: “…But the latest Afghan surge of troops is now more than a year old, if judged from when Marines were first deployed in December 2009…” ?

In fact, by March last year only some 12K of the 30K of US and nearly 7K in additional NATO/ISAF troop combinations had arrived.   Over 25K additional troops arrived between April and November last year, and the most liberal stretch of time would pronounce this new period of troop engagement as begun in earnest only since September 2010.   As you also know, these numbers have been concentrated in places like Aghrandhab, Panshwaj and the ‘hard case’ places where longstanding Taliban lodgements and well-defended and mined areas are now reporting activity where none but spotty British contact had been generated in the previous 9 years.   There are still strong reasons to doubt the relevance of IEDs encountered as any kind of a meaningful metric at this very early point.   There is also reasonable doubt about the absolute relevance of the metric about “IEDs and caches reported to Coalition and ANSF by locals…”   But these numbers are up DRAMATICALLY in Kandahar and Helmand province, and bear watching throughout the rest of this year to see if they do mark a major change in the conditions on the ground.

Also, why no mention of the additional 70K ANSF added between Nov 2009 & Nov 2010?   More of them and more capable numbers of them IS one of the key measures of success in enabling a core objective of empowering Afghan security forces to deal with the insurgeny on its own; and a large number of critics last year were skeptical that such numbers could ever be raised much less trained over the course of 2010.

Afghanistan is not Iraq, and you must know that comparisons between the two are somewhere between unhelpful and misleading.  Having said that, I’d contend that there is one very different dynamic that does matter, and that’s on what happens regarding cross-border insurgency leadership dynamics.   By summer 2007, Moktada d’Sadr had opted for an extended stay in Iran and saw his militias embarrased and then broken by US & ISF in Baghdad and Basra by early fall and appeared to have counseled the remainder to turn toward the Iraqi political process.    The mid-to-lower level Taliban in Afghanistan have been taking a beating and their in-Pakistan senior leadership (Zakir, Omar, etc.) has been exhorting them to continue ops without serious replenishment of munitions or losses.   We must wait through the summer and the spring to see whether their kinetic ops in Afghanistan will severely erode the capability and relevance of those left to do the dirty work by an increasingly distant and isolated insurgency brain trust.  We can also look then to see if these senior Taliban and their Pakistani co-facilitators begin to look more seriously at options in the Afghanistan political reconciliation process.

Indeed, count me among those who see a picture in Afghanistan AND Pakistan that is far more mixed and nuanced than your short PBS column chooses to paint.

Best,

Tom

COL/DR Tom Lynch

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Finally, a link to an analysis of the disconnect between what tactical progress US units have made and the lack of same at the strategic level, which gives rise to frustration that whatever sacrifices and progress US forces are making on the ground, it will be for naught if the Afghan government remains incompetent and corrupt and the Afghan Army/police are not capable of holding the successes achieved on the ground.

Click here: Military Analysis – Translating Afghan Strategy Into Action – NYTimes.com

The much anticipated Afghanistan Strategy Review was wrapped up last week and presented to the public. Contrary to many expectations, the Review roll-out revealed no fissures, no dissent, no sniping at the President’s policy, and certainly no indications that anything but progress has been achieved.

The President trotted out his national security team and military leadership to a brief press conference who uniformly endorsed the conclusion that real progress was being made against the Taliban insurgency and in building up Afghan governance and military capabilities. Absent was any sign of impassioned dissent that all know is going on behind the scenes, as VP Joe Biden held his tongue (no mean feat!) and criticisms of the war effort were muted. Instead, the skeptics and the naysayers held their ammo for another day, probably next spring when the crucial decision will be made regarding the promised troop withdrawals slated to begin in July, 2011

This is not to say there is no reason to be optimistic. There are indications that significant progress has been made in degrading the various insurgencies that march under the Taliban banner, particularly in Helmand and the Pashtun areas in general. Its networks have been disrupted, key leaders eliminated, insurgents have been cleared in large areas in the south, and the Taliban momentum that was apparent this summer seems to have been arrested.

In Pakistan and well as Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is under considerable pressure from our intensified drone attacks. While safe havens haven’t been eliminated, they have been compromised and are no longer secure from U.S. UAV and special operations forces operations. The most important Taliban havens in Helmand and Kandahar have been eliminated, places that had gone unchallenged for years. The Taliban is no longer considered capable of launching major attacks on Kabul, explosives are more difficult to obtain, and, as General Dave Petraeus observed, “we have arrested the momentum of the Taliban and reversed it in some areas”.

Still, critics of the war, including many in the Administration, remain concerned that the gains achieved are fragile and subject to reversal once U.S./Allied forces leave the “inkpots” they now occupy. They remain unconvinced that the Afghan central and provincial governments can provide the competent and efficient governing and security forces once the ISAF militaries withdraw. There is little doubt that the security situation has improved in areas where U.S. military forces are operating in strength, but the gains are likely to fade in the wake of their departure. This is due to the weakness of central government institutions, the tenacity of the Taliban and their ties especially to the Pashtuns, and the reality that the insurgents enjoy a sanctuary in neighboring Pakistan.

All sides agree that the two primary concerns are the lack of Afghan governance and competent security forces (police and army), and safe havens in Pakistan. The central government under President Karzai is corrupt and inefficient and the provincial officials he appoints are incompetent and dishonest. Indeed, the Taliban derive much of their support from ordinary Afghans’ resentment of corruption and government incompetence (Transparency International ranks Afghanistan as the world’s 2^nd-most corrupt country).

The problem of safe havens in Pakistan remains the core challenge. As the Chairman of the JCS, ADM Mike Mullen, has charged, Pakistan has the ability to shut down insurgent hideouts and stop the flow of fighters across the border into Afghanistan. But it hasn’t done so, despite repeated pleas and the funneling of significant financial aid. Islamabad seems interested only in the militias that threaten Pakistan itself, not those who operate in Afghanistan (or globally).

The optimism expressed by the American military on the ground and the Pentagon has been challenged by two recent estimates (NIEs) from the National Intelligence Council, one on Pakistan and the other on Afghanistan. The estimates conclude that it will be difficult if not impossible for the US and its allies to prevail unless Pakistan roots out militant groups that take sanctuary within its borders. The NIE concludes that it is unlikely that Islamabad will do so.

Public opinion continues to shift against the war in Afghanistan. 60% of Americans now say the war is not worth fighting, a more than 20-point rise since Obama’s election. His Democratic base is especially restive, but independents as well are united in opposition (72% for Dems, 63% for Indies) to continuing the war. They see that more than 500 American soldiers have lost their lives this year alone, and ten times that many have suffered casualties. In addition, fiscal hawks are questioning the value of spending more than $100 billion a year in this campaign. The strained federal budget means that the longer the war goes on the less money that is available for projects the President and the Congress believe are essential to ensuring long-term global competitiveness.

The Obama war—and it is now truly the President’s war as he himself has admitted—is also drawing flak from national security experts who feel that the longer the American military is engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the less it is capable of conducting a serious campaign against North Korea or Iran (see the piece by former State and White House official in Republican administrations, Richard Haass, in today’s WSJ). Haass advocates a rapid disengagement, bringing U.S. forces down to 30,00 by 2012 and essentially relying on a “counterterrorism” strategy, that is “….a package of drones, special forces, and training of local forces”. He acknowledges that this could be a detriment to countering Taliban resurgence, but argues that the current COIN-nation-building-CT combined strategy offers no assurances of success either.

Obama’s principal allies in maintaining the current strategy are, ironically, those on the right side of the political spectrum—Speaker-designate John Boehner, SEN Mitch McConnell, conservative commentators like the Kagans and Max Boot. They believe that Obama now thinks that “success” in this war is vital to the success of his Presidency. However, I hold that the President is also set in reducing our force levels significantly starting next July, a move that could alienate his current backers but might just bolster his base before the 2012 elections.

This is a difficult tightrope for the President to walk. On the one hand he must defend the war as it is being fought and argue that great progress is being made. Increasingly he will also have to demonstrate that this is not an endless commitment—he will certainly begin to draw down forces in July, but will have to do it in such a way that both friend and foe alike do not interpret that as the “U.S. is heading for the exits”. That is, that our gains are “durable and sustainable”, as the Kagans claim.

So ends the third Afghanistan strategy review in two years, with an endorsement of the current strategy and a flouting of the successes it has brought. However, turmoil and dissent still are present within the Administration, the American public is growing more restive, and the pressure to announce significant withdrawals—despite Pentagon grumbling—will intensify. Stay tuned!

-  Tyrus W. Cobb

December 20, 2010

The “New America Foundation” convened a mixed group of scholars, national security experts, and veterans of the Afghanistan conflict to produce this study, “Rethinking the U.S. War in Afghanistan”. The report was written by the “Afghanistan Study Group”, which was modeled after the Bush Administration’s “Iraq Study Group”, but lacks any official cache.

The report strongly recommendations seriously reducing the U.S./NATO military presence in Afghanistan. It deflates the idea that nation-building is a viable objective or a course of action worth pursuing. The Group more narrowly defines what strategic interests we have there (insuring no safe sanctuary for Al Qaeda and maintaining real control over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons), draws on the “Counter-Terrorism” approach advocated by VP Biden and others, recommends more reliance on traditional diplomacy and balance of power tactics, and all but abandons any reliance on a strong central government in Kabul.

The report states that “ America and its allies are mired in a civil war in Afghanistan and are struggling to establish an effective central government in a country that has long been fragmented and decentralized. “ The Group concludes that “Instead of toppling terrorists, America’s Afghan war has become an ambitious and fruitless effort at nation-building.”

In some ways, given that the composition of the group contains no “NeoCons” or strong supporters of the COIN strategy (“COINdinistas” such as the Kagans), the observations are not surprising. However, I was struck by some of the major conclusions:

• Referring to the President’s recent speech on Iraq, the report says his focus instead should have been on Afghanistan — “where the hemorrhage of U.S. interests and resources is only worsening.”

• Despite acceding to the “Pentagon’s surge in troop levels, huge budget requests and civilian nation-builders, as well as the deployment of a superstar general, Obama’s current approach in Afghanistan is failing.”

• The United States has only two vital interests in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region: preventing Afghanistan from being a “safe haven” from which Al Qaeda or other extremists can organize more effective attacks on the U.S. homeland and ensuring that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal does not fall into hostile hands.

• Protecting American interests does not require a U.S. military victory over the Taliban. “A Taliban takeover is unlikely, even if Washington reduces its military commitment. The Taliban is a rural insurgency rooted in Afghanistan’s Pashtu population, and it had succeeded due, in part, to the disenfranchisement of rural Pashtuns”. The Taliban seized power in the 1990s under an unusual set of circumstances that no longer exist and are unlikely to be repeated.

• There is no significant Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan today, and the risk of a new “safe haven” there under more “friendly” Taliban rule is overstated. Should an Al Qaeda cell regroup in Afghanistan, the United States would have residual military capability in the region sufficient to track and destroy.

• The recommended policy seeks to shift resources to focus on U.S. foreign policy strengths “in concert with the international community to promote reconciliation among the warring parties, advance economic development and encourage region-wide diplomatic engagement.” (my comment—all nice sounding phrases, but not sure what that means in practice)

• The Group concludes that “this war’s massive management mess is that the price tag to U.S. taxpayers has soared to nearly $100 billion annually. Compare that to the astonishing fact that Afghanistan’s gross national product is only one-seventh of this — $14 billion.  Washington is now spending more on Afghanistan — and failing in its efforts — than the entire annual cost of the new U.S. health insurance program.”

• Thousands of American and allied personnel have been killed or gravely wounded. Too many innocent Afghans and Pakistanis have become victims — assuring unpredictable blowback in the years ahead.

• Prospects for success are dim. “The U.S. interests at stake in Afghanistan do not warrant this level of sacrifice. The Afghanistan conflict has now grown disproportionally large in the global portfolio of U.S. national security concerns, outweighing and tilting attention and resources away from other troubles in the Middle East, from Iran, from North Korea, from the global consequences of an ascending and more powerful China.”

• The Afghanistan Study Group also notes that like Viet-Nam, where Lyndon Johnson ruefully noted the dilemma he faced, “I can’t win….and I can’t get out”, Obama may soon feel that he, too, is mired in the quicksand of Central Asia, seeing no course but to follow through with a strategy that has little prospect for success.

• Again, given the composition of the ASG, the conclusions are not surprising. However, they will add fuel to the growing impatience on the part of the American people for an alternative solution….or a withdrawl.

• The group’s report can be downloaded here and is due to be released at the New America Foundation today.

-Ty

Click here: A New Way Forward | Report of the Afghan study group