In a rather bold move, the Taliban have overrun and occupied an entire district of Kandahar province, and at last report were fighting over control of a district in Uruzgan. Combined with Musa Qala, which, as best I can see, is still controlled by the Taliban, ISAF is steadily losing ground to the Taliban.
This is the result of what looks like a slight change in tactics. Normally, when a clash happens with the Taliban (these battles are usually lopsided), the besieged Coalition troops call in air support. Planes drop, at the minimum, 500 lb. bombs, and in the aftermath it is usually discovered the Taliban were hiding behind a bunch of civilians. The deaths of these civilians is quite often blamed on the Coalition, rather than the Taliban who were using them as human shields. This takeover is the result of a strategic withdrawal, meant to curb civilian deaths, which would sound pretty if the Afghans weren’t still blaming us for the deaths of their families on battlefields.
It is a total no-win situation, and I’m not sure, aside from some fundamental shift in strategy (say, increasing pressure on Pakistan to allow pursuit rights into FATA and NWFP), how this can be improved. It seems like a fundamental clash between the goal of removing the Taliban and preserving civilian lives and the Kabul government. Do any of you have any ideas?
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Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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If only the U.S. and NATO would increase the number of troops in the hot spots so that the troops could drive out Taliban fighters out of districts without depending so much on air power. We can just cross our fingers that the U.S. and NATO can frustrate the Taliban from making any new lasting territorial advance.
I hope it IS true that U.S. is putting great pressure on Pakistan to subjugate pro-Taliban elements in the government and ISI, depriving the Taliban of their funding. And I hope that the Taliban will hurt from the absence of Dadullah, and maybe even Haqqani if the death rumor is true. With the Taliban hampered, Karzai and the tribal elders can work out their own political solution with them.
I think you’re wrong to make such a big thing out of this. The only reason why all the western media outlets went big with this story was that the government announced it. In reality, there are a number (I could give you a list) of districts which have been taken by the Taliban.
It, once again, is an indication of the poor quality of the foreign media in Afghanistan…
The description of the conflicting imperatives stemming from concerns over civilian casualties, over gains by the Taliban, and over own/soldier casualties is certainly accurate. However, I would join the previous commenter in saying we shouldn’t make too much of this, although perhaps for reasons different from his. Till ISAF’s Stage 3 expansion there were a lot less foreign soldiers in the southern provinces. At that time a lot less attention was given to who controlled what there. Now of course the media jumps on stories like this. A district taken by THEM from US… that’s news for sure.
Alex –
That’s fair; is that why it’s barely made the newspapers in your newsletters? Also, if it’s not a big deal when the Taliban occupy a district, should it even be responded to?
That’s kind of what I’m getting at. I agree with you that foreign media in Afghanistan is awful (and usually parrots only what ISAF tells them), but I can’t for the life of me see what else is going on — making it damned near impossible to see what, if anything, might be changed to make the reconstruction more successful.
Josh
It barely made the papers in our coverage because it was barely commented on…correct.
The only articles were parroted transcripts of ISAF spokesperson-babble on the topic. Peter is correct, too, that before there were troops down in the south, things like this used to happen all the time, but it was left unreported because this was not viewed as important by news editors back in Europe. I think perhaps I’m doing my colleagues here in Afghanistan – especially those of us taking the risk to work down south – a disservice. The problem is more foreign news editors back ‘home’ than the correspondents out here. Although I could write a whole essay on the correspondents, too…
In general, though, Afghanistan is a fascinatingly – if frustratingly – complex arena. Each time I return I uncover a new layer to add to the mix. That’s why local news is so important, especially these small nuggets of information buried in seemingly mundane reports from the provinces.
As to what we can be doing…well how about listening to the voices on the ground, advisors (not to mention the Afghan parliamentary representatives, who have shamefully been allowed to meet and gather but by and large completely ignored by the internationals here) and the like who have sensible initiatives that could be implemented. I daren’t say that things can hardly get any worse, but at the very least we should have the gumption to try more risky strategies that could have big payoffs.
What strategies do you have in mind?