I remain skeptical that we are losing in Afghanistan, even when General Petraeus says we are:
“Obviously the trends in Afghanistan have been in the wrong direction, and I think everyone is rightly concerned about them,” said General Petraeus, who as the commander of forces in Iraq oversaw the troop “surge” that has been credited with helping to reduce the violence there.
Turning things around in Afghanistan and Pakistan would require taking away militant sanctuaries and strongholds that the insurgents would defend tenaciously, he said. “Certainly in Afghanistan, wresting control of certain areas from the Taliban will be very difficult,” he said.
The same went for Pakistan, he said, where extremism presented a deadly threat, graphically highlighted by the recent Marriott Hotel bombing. “In both places, in certain areas, the going may be tougher before it gets easier,” he said.
To be fair, he didn't actually say we are losing. And these days it is a political sin to express anything greater than cautious yet worried optimism over our war effort.
Yes, it is true that with Pakistan as a sanctuary, the Taliban and al Qaeda are gaining strength, but there is a difference between escalating combat and killing on the one hand and losing the war. Germany had more men under arms in 1943 than in 1942 and levels of combat were higher in 1943. And there was more combat and Germans under arms in 1944 than in 1943. Would you really say that the Germans were winning based on the metrics of military size and combat levels?
We face a stronger enemy because of the cross-border sanctuaries, but Afghan forces and Coalition forces are stronger now, too. The Taliban are as far from seizing the government as they have ever been since we overthrew their government seven years ago.
And I still want to know what our objective is in Afghanistan. I think keeping it from being a sanctuary for al Qaeda is good enough. Are we increasing our objective here to creating a somewhat modern unified state without debating what more troops will be used to achieve? Are we really going to try to make Afghanistan a modern country in one generation?
Remember, as Petraeus did, that Pakistan must be addressed to succeed:
“The heartening aspect is there appears to be a willingness on the part of the Pakistani government and military to undertake the kind of operations necessary,” he said.
Indeed, the Pakistani government is surprising me by its resolve to fight the jihadis in their frontier areas:
There is cautious hope among military planners and observers here that the current military offensive in Bajaur – one of seven districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas – will be a much-needed turning point in Pakistan's war against domestic militancy.
In previous FATA offensives, the Army has stopped partway through and signed truces that ultimately allowed militants to regroup.
This time the Army has orders to fight until they control the area, says Ikram Sehgal, the publisher of Defence Journal who served in FATA as an Army major. "They're operating with a clear mandate now, which makes all the difference," he says.
Further, the new Pakistani intelligence chief may be able to control the pro-jihad elements in the intelligence services:
Pakistan's army chief named a general considered a hawk in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban to head the country's powerful spy agency, asserting his control at a time of U.S. concern that rogue operatives are aiding Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.
Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shujaa Pasha oversaw military offensives against militants in the lawless border regions with Afghanistan in his most recent job as director general of military operations.
His appointment as head of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, the country's main spy agency, was part of a broader shake-up of army top brass announced late Monday by military chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Last summer, when al Qaeda effectively declared war on Pakistan, I felt that Pakistan needed to recognize that they could no longer make deals with the Devil, hoping the jihadis would kill anybody but Pakistanis. Al Qaeda has no place else to go and may be forced into a fight to the death in Pakistan's frontier areas. And if our added brigades for Afghanistan are intended to be the anvil against which the Pakistani hammer pounds the jihadis, the promised Afghan "surge" will work, too.
This may yet be the Last Jihad.
