More Good News From Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

Where does one begin detailing the tales of woe emanating from the war in Afghanistan?

According to the International Red Cross the situation for civilians in Afghanistan has become "untenable" and the problems seem to be particularly acute in the South which is where the lion's share of US-led fighting is occurring. And for all the 'progress' being made in places like Sangin (where 29 US soldiers have died and 75 wounded since October) and Helmand Province it now appears that Taliban fighters are slipping back into both places.

Things are not much better in Kunduz where on Friday the province police chief was murdered and over the weekend 36 people were killed at a police recruitment center - both by suicide bombers. In all more than 200 civilians have died in the last six weeks from Taliban attacks. The uptick in violence in the North probably shouldn't come as a huge surprise: as Candace Rondeaux of ICG mentions, " In many ways, the effect of the surge has been to push people northward towards areas where there is actually greater population density." I seem to think some people mentioning last year that this might happen.

And now even President Karzai thinks that NATO should be ending operations in Afghanistan after the killing on nine boys gathering firewood in Kunar province (an incendiary statement that of course he quickly backed away from after, one would imagine, some sort of US pressure).

It appears to be, ironically a view shared by our NATO allies, which led to this rather undiplomatic upbraiding by Secretary of Defense Gates in a recent trip to Brussels:

“Frankly, there is too much talk about leaving and not enough talk about getting the job done right,” Mr. Gates said. “Too much discussion of exit and not enough discussion about continuing the fight. Too much concern about when and how many troops might redeploy and not enough about what needs to be done before they leave.”

Perhaps Gates should deliver those words to the American people who seem to have the same view. According to a poll published today in the Washington Post, nearly two-thirds of Americans think the war is no longer worth fighting and want to see "substantial" troop reductions come July.

But alas perhaps all this bad news has it backwards - and the pessimistic public opinion is just missing the many signs of progress. Indeed, it now appears that we have reached a "turning point" in Afghanistan:

“This is a critical time for him (the Taliban) but I think he’s going to see the landscape dramatically different,” said US Army Colonel David Furness, in charge of troops in the key Helmand districts of Marjah, Garmsir and Narwar.

“He’s going to find us better positioned this year to deal with him than last and he’s going to pay for it.” US Defence Secretary Robert Gates, visiting Helmand on a two-day visit to Afghanistan last week.

However, as Josh Foust very nicely points this is not the first time we've hit a positive turning point in Afghanistan. It seems to be happening, oh I don't know, about once every year we've been in Afghanistan.

In fact, things are progressing so well, and the US military effort is making such progress, that ABC News is reporting that "Field commanders in Afghanistan are asking for more troops" and "some are openly challenging the wisdom of withdrawing any U.S. force by the July 11 date set by the administration."

So once again we've hit a point that we seem to hit every few weeks with Afghanistan; reems of data and anecdotal evidence suggests that the war in Afghanistan is going badly; that civilian death tolls have increased; that the Karzai government remains deeply alienated from the US/NATO effort; that our security gains may not be sustainable . . . and then confident predictions from the US military that we are on the cusp of turning the tide in the war.

In short, we have reality in Afghanistan - and then we have what our military and political leaders tell us.

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