It will be difficult for the Taliban to make the case that they are chasing America and the Coalition out of Afghanistan if this keeps up:
This month the Taliban declared the start of a Spring Offensive. This one is supposed to be different as for the last six years. The Spring Offensive usually means five months of the Taliban killing civilians and the security forces and foreign troops killing lots of Taliban. This year the Taliban boasts that it will be different, with fewer civilians and more Afghan police and soldiers killed. So far it’s more of the same, with even more civilian casualties from Taliban attacks. These civilian losses were up about 30 percent this year over last year. So far the Taliban have killed more police, but have in turned suffered more losses themselves. It appears that this year’s Spring Offensive will be as much of a flop as the last six were.
Most Afghans ignore the Taliban and their talk of another Spring Offensive. That’s because most of the Taliban activity occurs in two (Kandahar and Helmand) of the 34 provinces. Some 40 percent of the Taliban violence is in ten Kandahar and Helmand districts (out of 398 in the entire country). Why that concentration of Taliban activity? It’s because of the heroin.
Even without our troops in the field, the Taliban are getting pounded. For all the problems with our training, remember that the Taliban have the same recruiting pool as we do. Imagine how bad their forces are since our guys are pounding them. Who knew that a barely literate, barely trained Afghan is a better soldier than an illiterate, untrained Afghan?
It is also important to note that the violence coming out of "Afghanistan" is so geographically restricted. So even when you read about events like this, don't panic:
Five U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb in the southern Afghanistan province of Kandahar on Saturday, a U.S. authorities said, capping off one of the bloodiest weeks for international forces this year.
The "bloodiest week" status is mostly from accidents, and is far less bloody than the weeks when we were engaged in offensive combat missions. These are tragedies for us and not indicators of defeat.
This is counter-insurgency in action--the people we trained and organized can carry on the fight with increasingly less help from us. Once they needed us in the lead in the field. Now they can get by with our logistics, intelligence, and firepower. Let's keep providing that until the Afghans have the means to provide them in sufficient quantity to carry on the fight.
This is why I haven't condemned the Obama administration for pulling out of Afghanistan. I don't assume it is too early. I don't assume Afghanistan will collapse when we leave only a small force to support our friends. But then, my hopes for Afghanistan have never been high:
The end result in Afghanistan, if all goes well, will be a nominal national government that controls the capital region and reigns but does not rule local tribes and which actually helps the locals a bit rather than sucking resources from the locals, who in turn do not make trouble for the central government or allow their areas to be used by jihadis to plan attacks on the West. We press for reasonable economic opportunities, with bribes all around (I mean, foreign aid), to keep a fragile peace.
And we stick around this time, unlike after the Soviets left Afghanistan when we ignored the place, for a generation or two to see if we can move Afghanistan into the 19th century (hey, let's not get ahead of ourselves).
Hopefully our military surge recedes by the end of 2011 and we can get down to a single combat brigade plus air power that function as a fire brigade and a hammer for the central government should a local difficulty exceed Afghan military capabilities.
Our offensive did end by the end of 2011, as it turns out. But the scaling back of the two surges we deployed (I thought the first surge would have been enough) has taken longer than my one-surge analysis figured. And while the size of our post-combat force we leave in Afghanistan may be close to what I assumed, I don't think we plan to have a combat brigade capable of being fielded as a reserve of last resort.
Not that I don't worry. I think we did a better job of both training Iraqis on the one hand and pounding down enemies on the other, compared to what we've done in Afghanistan. And Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan are also better than anything Iraqi rebels and terrorists had outside of Iraq. And Iraq is getting shakier without our presence. So I hope we don't just leave too early from Afghanistan as we did in Iraq.
Also, while Pakistan screwed with our line of supply, we did not face a supply crisis for our many forces as I feared could happen. So I can exhale soon, I think, about that worst-case worry.
