By most metrics the war in Afghanistan is going badly
By James Kitfield
By most metrics the war in Afghanistan is going badly. According to the most recent quarterly report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the troop strength of Afghan Security Forces is in “sharp decline” even as the Taliban are on the march throughout the countryside. The number of “security incidents” is similarly on the rise, to include a series of recent suicide bombings in Kabul, including one in late April attributed to Daesh (aka the Islamic State) that targeted and killed nine journalists and four police officers.
Opium production skyrocketed by nearly 90 percent in 2017, and the Afghan government continues to rate near the bottom on Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index.” The publication Long War Journal, which tracks the conflict, recently estimated that the Taliban now “controls or contests” 58.5 percent of Afghanistan’s 407 districts, a high-water mark for the Islamist extremist group. “The Taliban has seized the initiative and are dictating the pace and location of combat this fighting season, and they control or contest more Afghan territory than at any time since the United States ousted them from power back in 2001,” said Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, and editor of Long War Journal.
He characterized the Trump administration’s “surge” from roughly 8,400 to 14,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and a stepped-up bombing campaign, as necessary but not sufficient to check the Taliban’s momentum. “The Obama surge 2009-2012 forced the Taliban to retreat from key strongholds but they regrouped in safe havens in Pakistan, and since the U.S. and NATO withdrawal in 2014 the Taliban has taken advantage of a dysfunctional Afghan government and security forces. Why the Trump administration thinks it can now defeat the Taliban with 14,000 ‘train and assist’ troops, when we failed to defeat them with over 100,000 U.S. combat troops, is beyond me.”
Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan and NATO’s “Operation Resolute Support,” now confronts a familiar set of challenges. Afghan Security Forces number 313,728 on paper (army and police), but are declining as a result of attrition and recruiting problems, and Afghan units are wildly divergent in terms of quality. For its part, the Afghan government is riven by the corruption that attends a booming drug trade in a developing country.
The government is also split by a barely workable “power sharing” arrangement between rivals President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who now face another potentially disruptive presidential election scheduled for later this year. Despite the Trump administration freezing security aid to Pakistan, the Taliban and other extremists continue to enjoy sanctuary there that allows them to rest, regroup and plot in relative safety. Finally, Nicholson faces a ticking time clock back in Washington managed by a mercurial commander-in-chief in President Trump, and a war-weary Congress.
“All the trend lines suggest the Taliban has the initiative and momentum right now, and 14,000 U.S. trainers and advisers may not be enough to push the insurgents back on their heels. So this is a very dangerous period,” retired Lt. Gen. Dave Barno, former commander of U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, thinks. “The upcoming presidential elections are important both practically and symbolically, but with the Taliban targeting polling stations and election officials, and controlling or contesting a majority of the country by some estimates, I’m not sure you can hold a legitimate election,” said Barno, who noted that former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, a key architect of the Trump administration’s Afghan strategy, is no longer in the White House.
“If the election scheduled for this year leads to greater volatility, as happened during the last election cycle, then I think you’re going to hear a lot more `time to throw in the towel’ sentiments voiced in Washington,” said Barno. “At that point it will be interesting to see if President Trump remains invested in Afghanistan, or if he goes back to his earlier position that we should leave, and risks ceding this space to the Taliban and ISIS. U.S. military leaders would see that as catastrophic.” Indeed, U.S. military leaders have pushed back against a narrative of failure in Afghanistan, arguing that it is much too early to judge the impact of a campaign of additional troops and more aggressive tactics that only began last autumn. As recently as the end of 2016, they note, U.S. troops were still withdrawing from Afghanistan. With the Islamic State kicked out of most of the territory of its “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, U.S. Central Command has shifted resources and key enablers such as air power and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance assets to Afghanistan. As a result, the number of munitions dropped in the first quarter of 2018 was the highest recorded since reporting began in 2013, and is more than two-and-a-half times the amount dropped in the first quarter of 2017.