Rubin: Counter-Insurgency in Afghanistan -- Not a Khost of a Chance

As I have chronicled in this space, administration apologists such as Ann Marlowe and David Ignatius have been claiming Eastern Afghanistan in general and the tiny province of Khost in particular as proof of U.S. success in Afghanistan. (And Registan.net has been dogging their steps.) Marlowe, whose work has been featured in the Washington Post, National Review, Weekly Standard, and Wall Street Journal, claimed in in May that, far from being resurgent, "in the 14 provinces that make up Regional Command East [RC/E] in Afghanistan [the Taliban] are a defeated military force." Ignatius, the Washington Post columnist who mistook a one-week embed for journalism, "reported" that in RC/E "the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy has begun to get some traction."

I guess they had a visit from the Republican good news fairy. I am not so blessed. I have to rely on information. Of course my information is pretty superfluous, considering that the U.S. Department of Defense reported last week that Taliban attacks in RC/E this year were up 40 percent over last year. After rebutting Ignatius on the NewsHour, I have been periodically updating the data on Taliban and other anti-government and anti-international forces attacks in Afghanistan in general and RC/E in particular. Here's the latest, covering the first 25 weeks of 2008 and comparing them to 2007.

First, total number of nationwide incidents by week, 2008 compared to 2007:

Here's the regional breakdown and total statistics (these regions are not identical to the NATO regional commands):

This shows that total incidents are up nationally by 38 percent (991 over 717). Of course this could result from the poor performance of our week-kneed NATO allies, who have no counter-insurgency skills. So let's take a look at RC/E, where the U.S. is applying all the lessons of the Petraeus doctrine:
These data show an increase of total incidents in RC/E from 1,159 in 2007 to 1,521 in 2008, an increase of 31 percent. The 2007 figures include a huge spike in week 23 of 2007, which consisted largely of about 40 small IEDs in Khost aimed to intimidate (not kill) Afghan officials and security forces. Without that one-day incident, the increase of 2008 over 2007 is 36 percent, virtually the same as nationwide.

Of course all of RC/E is not the same: what about Khost province, "the crown jewel in the American counterinsurgency strategy," according to Ann Marlowe? My source reports 269 attacks so far this year in Khost, up 22 percent from last year's total of 220. So the greatest achievement of U.S. counterinsurgency in Afghanistan has been to hold the escalation in violence in Khost to a bit more than half of the national level of increase. This actually speaks well for the U.S. team in Khost: that province directly borders on Pakistan's North Waziristan Tribal Agency, where Taliban leaders Jalaluddin and Sirajuddin Haqqani maintain their sizable headquarters, including joint training with al-Qaida, without any visible disturbance from the Pakistan military. (Actually, according to Afghan intelligence, so far uncontradicted by the U.S. government, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate organized Haqqani's attempt to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai in April. It is unfair to hold the civilian government in Islamabad accountable for the situation in the tribal areas or the activities of the ISI. More on this in another post.)

But if these results speak well for the U.S. team in Khost, they do not speak well for U.S. strategy. Counter-insurgency is not graded on a curve; not succeeding is failing. So far, that's still where the indicators point. Read more on this article...

Rubin: In RC/E did David Ignatius a Stately Pleasure Dome Decree

I never paid much attention to David Ignatius. One of the luxuries of living in New York is not having to take the editorial page of the Washington Post too seriously. I did not even have a clear idea of what his views or journalistic habits were. But then I appeared on the NewsHour with him last week. I went into the studio thinking I would just give my analysis of the situation in Afghanistan after the attack on the Mujahidin Victory Day Celebration in Kabul, but instead found myself being asked to respond to his inane repetitions of PR handouts from the Defense Department. Scott Horton of Harper's characterized Ignatius' first article, a comprehensive cliche-ridden report on his one-week embed, as "Opium Dreams."

I was truly astounded last Sunday to read his second article -- Oh Person from Porlock where art thou? Couldst not have interrupted this opium-induced orientalist phantasie before such lines as:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan -- The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

Somebody should have told Ignatius that Usama left Jalalabad in 1996, in order to move to Qandahar, to be closer to Mulla Muhammad 'Umar, leader of the Taliban, and that he moved again in December 2001, this time to the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies of Pakistan, where he has re-established a secure base of operations. Did Ignatius even bother to read last July's National Intelligence Estimate on "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland?" One key judgment:

Al-Qa’ida is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership. Although we have discovered only a handful of individuals in the United States with ties to al-Qa’ida senior leadership since 9/11, we judge that al-Qa’ida will intensify its efforts to put operatives here.

• As a result, we judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment.

It is of course legitimate to disagree with NIEs, by, for example, questioning their evidential basis, looking for evidence of bias, presenting contrary evidence... But on the basis of a one-week embed in which a "journalist" discovers something that everybody who cares to already knows -- that Bin Laden is not in Afghanistan?

And Ignatius' solution for the problem of al-Qaida in FATA? Also lifted directly from a DoD handout:

The essential mission in combating al-Qaeda now is to adopt in Pakistan the tactics that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means alliances with tribal warlords to bring economic development to the isolated mountain valleys of the FATA region in exchange for their help in security. And it means joint operations involving U.S. and Pakistani special forces to chase al-Qaeda militants as they retreat deeper into the mountains.

Military action with warlords plus economic aid -- not a word about Pakistan's democratic government, its policy positions, or the issue of governance in FATA. A U.S.-led counter-terrorist offensive in the Tribal Agencies -- actually I think I have unjustly maligned the Department of Defense by calling this idea a DoD handout. I have discussed this issue with a number of senior US military and civilian defense officials, and all of them show greater understanding of the situation than Ignatius.

What exactly do you have to write to be discredited in this country? Read more on this article...

Update on Iran War Rollout

At UPI's "Outside View" feature, David Isenberg of the British American Security Information Council and the Cato Institute provides a summary of the campaign for war with Iran so far. He missed the Newsweek article by AEI fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht about why war is inevitable, the Washington Post's shameless reprise yesterday of its 2003 attack on Mohamed El-Baradei of the IAEA, the Anti-Defamation League's opening of its No Nuclear Iran campaign, and William Kristol's call for attacks on "Terrorist Training Camps" in Iran.

Update: The New Yorker used to have a capsule review of Night at the Opera which said, "The Marx Brothers do to Il Trovatore what ought to be done to Il Trovatore." See Salon, where Glenn Greewald does to Fred Hiatt and Michael Ledeen what ought to be done to Fred Hiatt and Michael Ledeen.

Update II: Interviewed by Spencer Ackerman of TPMMuckraker, Reuel Marc Gerecht of AEI good naturedly denies that he or AEI received any instructions from the Office of the Vice President to beat the drums for war with Iran. He even says something nice about me. Let's hope that he is right and my source is mistaken. For the record: I did not accuse "hardliners in Dick Cheney's office of giving right-leaning think tanks in Washington 'instructions' to start a drumbeat for war with Iran," as Ackerman writes. I passed on a credible report to that effect, explicitly saying I could not verify it, in order to draw attention to something I consider very dangerous. Let's see if empirical evidence confirms or disconfirms the hypothesis.
Read more on this article...