When President Obama ordered two surges in Afghanistan, our military didn't get the forces they wanted. So our military decided on a phased counter-insurgency offensive to knock down the Taliban in order to make them weak enough for Afghan government forces to handle when we left. Both sides of the equation count, remember, so building up Afghan forces was only part of the solution.
The first phase was our 2010 offensive in Regional Command South into the heart of the Taliban insurgency (and drug production area) to clear and hold that territory.
Once that was done, we would switch to Regional Command East where the Taliban and terrorists had the advantage of sanctuaries in Pakistan for a rear area.
While the offensive in the south commenced, we would "shape the battlefield" in the east by preparing our forces for going in, by improving infrastructure to support that offensive, and by knocking down key enemy capabilities.
But the start of our withdrawal from Afghanistan prevented us from waging a counter-insurgency offensive in RCE that looked like the RCS offensive.
All through 2012, I wondered where the planned offensive was.
Strategypage notes that we did hit the enemy starting in 2011:
Starting in 2011 Haqqani came under unprecedented attack by NATO forces. That meant over 1,600 suspected Haqqani men (including 300 local leaders) were arrested during over 500 raids in that year alone. These operations killed or captured dozens of known Haqqani officials, often key people who were difficult to replace. Haqqani is being forced to risk its lucrative operations (and personnel) in eastern Afghanistan in order to carry out Pakistan ordered terror attacks in Kabul and elsewhere. While Haqqani has a sanctuary in Pakistan (North Waziristan), that area is subject to constant patrols by CIA UAVs, and missile attacks on terrorist leaders and other key personnel. The area is monitored by electronic surveillance and a network of informers. In eastern Afghanistan, the growing number of NATO raids have cost Haqqani a lot of money, and made it more expensive to carry out terrorist attacks. As bad as it was for Haqqani in 2011 it got worse in the next two years. An example of this is the growing tension with the Pakistani Taliban. This is largely because local disputes between Taliban and Haqqani have escalated and recently the Taliban apparently ordered the killing of a senior Haqqani official (Nasiruddin Haqqani) in Pakistan.
To me, that seems like more of the "shaping the battlefield" stage.
And later in 2012, as I failed to see signs of an offensive like the one we executed in Regional Command South, I wondered just what happened to the plan?
It soon became clear, as General Allen answered the question of "when are we going to shift our main effort to the east?"
The answer was that the second phase of our two-phased offensive was an Afghan-fronted counter-insurgency offensive to clear and hold. Before we turned over fighting responsibility to the Afghans (as we have this year while we remain to support them), we turned over responsibilities in Regional Command East.
In this light, our effort against the Haqqani network wasn't so much a part of shaping the battlefield for our second phase counter-insurgency offensive in the east as it was our own transition. While Afghan forces took the lead in that offensive, we transitioned our forces to a counter-terror mission in support of the Afghan-fronted counter-insurgency mission in the east.
So I was perhaps unfair in blaming politics on the lack of an offensive. But only "perhaps" since the short-duration of the surge authorized by the president may have been intended to be reversed by the time of the 2012 election. It may be that my assumption of the planned nature of the offensive was my reading of the military's assumption and not the civilian administration assumptions. The military may have thought/hoped that they could persuade the Obama administration to extend the surge to complete their plan.
And in my defense, it has always been tougher for me to get a "feel" for the Afghan campaign than it was for the Iraq War. Even relying on a press corps generally with a poor level of understanding of warfare, the sheer volume of reporting made it possible to get a sense of the campaign if you filtered out the idiocy and ignorance (when they tried to explain the "why" part of reporting) to focus on what they were reporting happened (the "who, what, when, and where" parts). There just hasn't been the same level of reporting from Afghanistan.
It has worked well enough, it seems. But we haven't knocked down our enemies as thoroughly as we did in Iraq with our 2007 surge offensive (and complementary Awakening). So Afghan forces have a lot more work to do to defend the gains made over the last 12 years. Thus, it is more important to keep American and Coalition forces in Afghanistan after next year to support Afghan troops.
Remember, Iraq was in a much better position to cope with the total loss of US troops. And Iraq has proven unable to prevent al Qaeda from regenerating. Sure, part of that is because they gained support from Sunni jihadis in Syria, but we bear some responsibility for allowing that to happen by failing to support anti-Assad rebels early in the fight (our government clearly--and wrongly--assumed Assad was doomed and so would get a free win even without doing anything to help).
Regardless of why Iraqis are having problems now, it should be a cautionary lesson not to abandon our imperfect Afghan friends now.
