In brief remarks this morning about the just-completed formal review of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Barack Obama said that there has been "significant progress," but "this continues to be a difficult endeavor." The United States, he said, is "on track to achieve our goals" and targets for training Afghan security forces "are being met." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chief Vice Chairman Gen. James Cartwright are now briefing reporters and will be answering questions.
Some U.S. troops will begin returning home next July as previously announced, although the actual numbers have not been specified. The United States has approximately 100,000 soldiers and marines in Afghanistan, with an additional 50,000 from NATO.
While the White House is cautiously optimistic, two leaked National Intelligence Assessments written by the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies have taken an altogether different view. The Pentagon angrily dismissed the NIEs, arguing that they missed positive developments since September, the month from when the last information in the assessment dates. Moreover, the Pentagon claims, the NIEs were written by analysts without experience in Afghanistan, "allegations ... dismissed as absurd by the intelligence agencies which have their officers and sources all over Afghanistan. The CIA has a 3,000-strong private Afghan army used in special operations and funds many Afghan militia leaders."
The President's remarks accompanied the release of the Afghanistan and Pakistan Annual Review promised last December as part of a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan. A five-page summary of the mostly classified review released Wednesday night states that progress is being made and "the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible." In fact, based on the summary, the review is heavily focused on Pakistan, with Afghanistan noted at the end. One item missing from the summary that has played a big part in previous reports: criticism of the Hamid Karzai regime.
We remain relentlessly focused on Pakistan-based al-Qa’ida because of the strategic nature of the threat posed by its leadership, and in particular the group’s continued pursuit of large-scale, catastrophic anti-Western attacks and its influence on global terrorism. We believe core al-Qa’ida continues to view the United States homeland as its principal target, and events over the past year indicate some of its affiliates and allies also are more aggressively pursuing such attacks. Although the global affiliates and allies of al-Qa’ida also threaten the U.S. homeland and interests, Pakistan and Afghanistan continue to be the operational base for the group that attacked us on 9/11. The presence of nuclear weapons in the region also lends to its distinct status, highlighting the importance of working with regional partners to prevent extremists, including core al-Qa’ida, from acquiring such weapons or materials.
The compounding losses of al-Qa’ida’s leadership cadre have diminished – but not halted – the group’s ability to advance operations against the United States and our allies and partners, or to support and inspire regional affiliates. Indeed, terrorist plotting continues against the United States and our allies and partners. Al-Qa’ida’s eventual strategic defeat will be most effectively achieved through the denial of sanctuaries in the region and the elimination of the group’s remaining leadership cadre. Even achieving these goals, however, will not completely eliminate the terrorist threat to U.S. interests. There are a range of other groups, including some affiliated with al-Qa’ida, as well as individuals inspired by al-Qa’ida, who aim to do harm to our nation and our allies. Our posture and efforts to counter these threats will continue unabated. ...
As a result of our integrated efforts in 2010, we are setting the conditions to begin transition to Afghan security lead in early 2011 and to begin a responsible, conditions-based U.S. troop reduction in July 2011. Moreover, at the recent NATO Lisbon Summit, we forged a broad Afghan and international consensus, agreeing on a path to complete transition by the end of 2014. Beyond these targets, and even after we draw down our combat forces, the U.S. will continue to support Afghanistan’s development and security as a strategic partner, just as the NATO-Afghanistan partnership affirms the broader and enduring international community support to Afghanistan.
Reactions were mixed. At Wired's Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman wrote:
The aim of the wider campaign, reiterated in the summary, is to crush al-Qaeda across the border in Pakistan’s tribal areas, defined as taking away their bases and the "elimination of the group’s remaining leadership cadre." In other words: whacking moles, all through massively stepped-up CIA drone strikes, despite years of warnings that they won’t lead to victory. "Significant progress" has been made in killing al-Qaeda leaders, the summary says, but there isn’t any real attempt to connect any of that to what U.S. troops are doing in Afghanistan.
And since the CIA drone program is technically secret, the review’s public summary asserts nebulously that Pakistani forces and some U.S. effort contributed to that progress. What’s that effort actually been? One hundred and ten drone strikes, supported by CIA’s teams of Pashtun spotters recruited in Afghanistan, double the number of strikes in 2009, which was a big increase from 2008. This is basically an undeclared war, which is one of the reasons why the incoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee wants to update the congressional authorization on taking military action against al-Qaeda.
David Livingstone, an associate fellow at the London-based Chatham House, an international affairs think-tank, said:
"The question is, is this just a military style report which is about slugging it out with the Taliban and see who wins, or is this an integrated campaign about government building, confidence building, community building campaign. And that's what it's got to be, you can't have an isolated military campaign.
"Instinctively, it (the review) looks a little short termist. With a message coming out saying: 'We're on track to start withdrawing soldiers'. What sort of soldiers? And what have been the decision making factors to actually say that a draw down of forces can occur? Are they looking just at tactical success, or are they looking at strategic development?"
Writing at Fox News, Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, one of the Pentagon shills part of a 2002-initiated Military Analyst program, said yesterday the administration should give up nation-building in Afghanistan and change the rules of engagement, allowing troops to act more aggressively.
Other reports on the situation, including the two above-mentioned NIEs, one on Pakistan and one on Afghanistan, offer a grimmer evaluation.
In No Shortcut to Stability: Justice, Politics and Insurgency in Afghanistan, Stephen Carter and Kate Clark of Chatham House, wrote:
he Afghan government and its international partners have generally treated justice as a secondary concern, marginal to ‘real’ politics. Yet it is fundamental to stability in Afghanistan. Indeed, lack of justice (in a broad sense which also encompasses the rule of law) is the key common element underlying much of the weakness of the Afghan state, as well as the most important political drivers of the conflict – bad and weak governance, political exclusion, abuses by the powerful, and corruption.
The sense of injustice has a visceral motivating power which easily takes on a political dimension – especially in Afghanistan, where justice historically has been tied to state legitimacy and where there is ample precedent for armed resistance in the face of perceived wrongs. Afghans commonly talk of people joining the Taliban because they are naraz (dissatisfied) or majbur (obliged or forced), which broadly relate to political marginalization and abuses by those in power. The description of one Taliban supporter in Wardak is typical:
Imagine: a district police chief was assigned by Kabul – and the police under him were robbers. They plundered and looted and raided people’s houses ... People became angry and, to take revenge, they stood against him and his group. The Taliban used this opportunity ...Our district is all Taliban now. The people support them.
Other factors – money, drugs, foreign interference – clearly drive the insurgency as well, but case studies of Helmand, Kandahar and Badghis provinces illustrate the central role of justice issues. They are also implicated in the increasing spread of the insurgency outside its southern, Pashtun base.
At the International Committee of the Red Cross:
"We are entering a new, rather murky phase in the conflict" in which warring factions thwart humanitarian aid and development, increasingly forcing Afghan civilians to flee the violence, said Reto Stocker, head of the [ICRC] in Afghanistan.
The surge of U.S. troops ordered by Mr. Obama a year ago massively upped the stakes in the Afghan war. Since he won the presidency in 2008, the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan has nearly tripled. "As the conflict has intensified and expanded geographically, civilian casualties have once again increased," the ICRC said. The war is "spreading. There’s no end in sight," Mr. Stocker said.
In a public statement released Tuesday, Afghanistan: a people trapped between sides, the ICRC said:
As the conflict has intensified and expanded geographically, civilian casualties have once again increased in comparison with previous years. Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, serving around four million people, has admitted over 2,650 weapon-wounded patients so far in 2010, compared with just over 2,100 in 2009. The seven ICRC prosthetic/orthotic centres have fitted close to 4,000 new patients with prostheses so far this year. Many of them lost their limbs as a result of fighting.
Meanwhile, the violence continues unabated. Some 489 U.S. troops and 104 NATO troops have been killed so far in 2010 and civilian casualties have risen, with a roadside bomb killing 14 on a minibus Thurday. A NATO air strike mistakenly killed four Afghan soldiers this week.