The top U.S. commander in eastern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schloesser, told The Associated Press last month that he is seeing a spike in the number of foreign militants — including Arabs and Chechens — flowing into Afghanistan. He said militant Web sites have been encouraging fighters to go to Afghanistan instead of Iraq.
The Afghan defense minister agrees:
"The success of coalition forces in Iraq and also some other issues in some of the neighboring countries have made it possible that there is a major increase in the foreign fighters," Wardak told a news conference. "There is no doubt that they are (better) equipped than before. They are well trained, more sophisticated, their coordination is much better."
Unless you listen to Leftist military "analysis" you might think that this means Iraq had been the main front in the war against al Qaeda until we clearly defeated them last year, which led al Qaeda to cash in their chips in Iraq and head for Pakistan and Afghanistan in a jihad surge. The shift began with our Iraq surge's beginning in early 2007 and accelerated through this year.
The result of this surge--this jihadi shift in emphasis from Iraq to Afghansitan--has certainly been higher level of fighting and death in Afghansitan, which had already been increased by the Taliban sanctuary built in Pakistan that fed jihadis into Afghanistan.
Wikipedia says 4,400 Afghans died in 2006, with more than 1,000 being civilians and 2,077 being enemy forces. I assume the rest are security forces.
In 2007, 7,468 Afghans died. This includes 1,980 civilians and 4,478 enemy.
Through August 2008, 1,445 innocent Afghan civilians have died; and overall, over 4,200 have died--with most being enemy deaths.
So if casualties stay at this pace, for 2008 we'll see over 2,100 civilian casualties among Afghans and 6,300 total Afghan casualties, including enemy forces who comprise most of the casualties. The innocent civilian casualties in 2008 won't be much different from 2007 although both 2007 and 2008 are higher than 2006. And this in a country of about 30 million people. If the pace per month continues, we could see casualties a third higher than last year's, but this is still not a lot--perhaps 2,600 innocent civilians for all of 2008. This would have been a routine month in Iraq at the height of the Iranian-al Qaeda mutual slaughter-fest.
Western military casualties are higher, too, just as enemy casualties are higher. Western troop casualties are not just a function of enemy attacks, but are increased by having more troops in Afghanistan the last two years, having our forces on the Afghan-Pakistan border where they are more likely to encounter enemy forces, and conducting winter offensives of our own which means we have more opportunities to encounter the enemy.
This is just not the picture of a country spilling out of control or a war we are losing. This is a war with a higher level of violence (but still low by Iraq 2006-2007 standards) that is the logical result of our victory in Iraq over the jihadis who are now going to fight in Afghanistan/Pakistan and the failure of the Pakistanis, until now, to tackle the tribal area sanctuaries.
Don't panic. Fighting is escalating in scope as all long wars see as both sides funnel more resources into the battle. Don't take our problems and turn them into catastrophe. Work the problem. And be clear what we want to achieve.
