In Afghanistan, the Taliban are desperately counting the days until January 1, 2015. By the end of 2014 most of the foreign troops should be gone. It's no secret in Afghanistan that the Taliban are having a very hard time of it. For example, in the last year, over 3,000 Taliban fighters have turned themselves into the police or army and accepted an amnesty deal. More have simply walked away, either because they weren't getting paid, or because they wanted to avoid seemingly certain death. Fighting the foreign troops is invariably fatal. ...
Taliban casualties are up, and NATO's are down 16 percent, and civilian casualties are down even more. Over 80 percent of the civilian dead are still due to the Taliban and that doesn't go unnoticed, even though the Taliban encourage the local media to play down Taliban caused civilian deaths and play up the much smaller number killed by foreign troops.
Oh, it's a secret that the Taliban are having a hard time. You can't swing a Google stick without being told the Taliban are "resurgent."
Remember, until 2008 or maybe as early as 2007, Afghanistan just wasn't threatened much by our enemies. We had few troops in Afghanistan, low casualties, and our enemies had no safe havens there.
It was only after 2006 when Pakistan began allowing jihadis safe havens in Pakistan's tribal territories and after 2007 when our surge broke the back of al Qaeda in Iraq and sent them fleeing back to Afghanistan (and their new Pakistan safe havens) that we needed more troops to hold our gains in Afghanistan. And it was only in late 2009 that the final surge of troops was ordered, with the troops arriving for a major effort in summer 2010 and last summer before starting to recede.
To have the impression that we've been struggling for 11 years at the pace of our 2010-1011 years with 100,000 US troops and achieving nothing lasting is wrong. And our last two years have done real damage to the Taliban. Our drone strikes in Pakistan have decimated jihadis there but at the price of angering Pakistanis and souring them on America.
Recall that at the end of 2008 I didn't think that we'd risk alienating Pakistan by continuing those drone strikes at any regular pace. I thought they were just spoiling attacks to knock back the jihadis during our presidential transition period. I was wrong about that, but my concern may be playing out now--with Pakistan's closing of our ground lines of supply through Pakistan--even though we have gotten away with striking the jihadis for years now.
It is a secret that we are winning in Afghanistan--if you rely on our press corps. And if we continue to believe that, we risk failing to support our Afghan allies in continuing the fight after we hand off the fight to Afghans until the Taliban and their al Qaeda and related jihadis are marginalized and no threat to Afghan peace or our skyscrapers.
