Whack-a-Mole
The biennial DoD reports to Congress on the War in Afghanistan are out today, and though we’ve known things haven’t been great in Afghaniland lately, the results are unexpectedly grim (this not helped by the fact that they accidentally released a working draft, including strikethroughs and tracked edits, showing the DoD trying to make some of it look more positive, or delete specific references to problem agencies and local trouble-bureaus). Ironically, given that it’s been a relatively good year in Iraq, Afghanistan, with a fourth as many troops, actually surpassed Iraq in monthly causalities for the first time in May.
Corruption runs rampant, troop stress has gotten alarming even to the DoD, the drug trade is now at a record high (counter-narcotics efforts, the Pentagon freely admits, “have not been successful”), but perhaps most alarming, the Taliban has coagulated and is now back on the offense, and expanding throughout the country (and into Pakistan). Gates continues to try to lay much of the blame on European non-involvement, but insiders are a bit more frank.
The turnaround poses a dilemma for the Bush administration, which had counted Afghanistan as the pinnacle of its success in the war on terror. U.S. commanders say they need more forces, but they can only be provided through withdrawing troops from Iraq. As a result, the administration may have to choose between accepting a smaller U.S. presence in Iraq or facing the prospect of turmoil in Afghanistan.
Senior Pentagon officials and military commanders have ordered a top-to-bottom review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. The review was prompted by high-level concern that the U.S. “was losing ground and slipping backwards,” said a senior military official familiar with the review.
Reading the report itself (PDF)(edits included!), it’s hard not to get the sense that we are indeed backsliding significantly there. In many ways, given the Pakistan proximity and the nature of the Taliban/Al Queda threat there, this is more problematic for actual United States national security then similar problems in Iraq would be.
Needless to say, this is extremely discouraging coupled with the good news from Iraq of late. One wouldn’t think that Iraq and Afghanistan would necessarily be a zero-sum situation, where success in one theater entails pulling back from the other, but that appears to be the case (and, I suppose it goes without saying, that should we have need for military action anywhere else, we’ll really be f*%#ed).