Afghan president Hamid Karzai says that the time for military antiterror operations in Afghanistan is over. He'd also appreciate a cessation of house searches by non-Afghan forces without government authorization.
That said, thirteen American soldiers were killed last month in Afghanistan.
See the extended for some digressive mucking about with numbers.
George Bush has said, in various ways, that he listens to our military commanders.
But consider this...
As I've discussed earlier, he's already ignored both the Iraq study group report and worries from our military that new troops would be a liability in Iraq.
At the same time, (American) General Bantz Craddock, representing the allied group in Afghanistan, is in Brussels begging for an additional two thousand troops from the other NATO member states.
So, to clarify cause and effect here.
No request for troops and a recommendation against it = Over 20,000 additional troops.
A desperate need for troops, and our officers begging for months for help from our allies = No additional American soldiers.
When Bush says that he listens to our military officers and their needs, he lies.
Right now, we're escalating in Iraq by adding fifteen percent again on top of our troop totals there, when no such increase was requested. The exact same number sent ot Afghanistan would be a whopping fifty-eight percent increase, perhaps enough to put paid to the remnant Taliban and their al Qaeda allies for good.
And remember, al Qaeda were the ones who attacked us, and the Taliban their bastard allies who harbored them. Not Hussein, not Iraq.
As a final bonus, whereas 20,000 soldiers sent to Iraq means another 19 Americans dead and 134 Americans wounded each month, 20,000 soldiers sent to Afghanistan means less than a third as many more Americans dead and wounded per month (6 and 42, respectively).
It's obscene that our officers must go, hat in hand, to our allies to try and fulfill critical needs neglected by George Bush, Dick Cheney and their league of incapable administrators.
It's looking suspiciously like the pending British drawdown in Iraq is actually a switchover, as 1,400 troops are slated to head off to Afghanistan to reinforce British efforts against the Taliban. That will bring their total in Afghanistan to a couple hundred shy of 8,000 troops.
Secretary of Defence Des Browne claims that the increase in Afghanistan did not precipitate the drawdown in Iraq. Whether or not this is true, it's certainly a step in the right direction, and shows that the UK is moving toward a more rational application of its forces than our President's emotional investment in not being wrong allows.
Consider again that earlier this month, one of our own generals was in Brussels begging for 2,000 more troops, even as we were planning on tossing another 20,000 or so into Iraq. It's fortunate that, in the absence of timely help from most other NATO member states (save Poland, who upped their contribution from 100 to 1,000 troops), the British government had the will and the wit to send more troops to an area that was once a breeding ground for terrorism, and could be yet again -- potentially bringing Pakistan and its arsenal along for the ride, if we're not careful.
For the Conservatives the shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said the increase indicated that "we are taking a disproportionate burden".
He described it as "scandalous that only four Nato nations ... the UK, the US, the Canadians and the Dutch - surprise, surprise - are contributing by far the greatest to the security in the south, and the most dangerous parts of the country.
"The UK taxpayers and the UK military are taking far more of the share of the burden than we should in what is supposedly a communal operation."
He said success in Afghanistan was "essential" for global security and said there were now questions to be asked about the future of Nato.
I believe we have done tremendous damage to the willingness of NATO partners to participate in the war in Afghanistan, because by sending such limited resources to such a critical region, we've made it seem as unwinnable as the counterinsurgency in Iraq clearly is. Perhaps the additional British commitment will demonstrate that that is not so.
It's drawdown time again for the British military. As the Eufor contingent in Bosnia moves from 6,000 troops to 2,500, 600 British troops formerly stationed in Bosnia will be moved out of the area. Once again, the question is whether ths is an intended drawdown following stabilization in Bosnia -- as is the claim -- or if it's an example of "scratching around" as a consequence of military overextension, to paraphrase Liam Fox.
Certainly, the relatively close match in numbers between the British drawdown in Iraq and the planned increases in Afghanistan made those two moves feel like almost a one-to-one switchover. That said, the fact that 600 troops are leaving Bosnia as part of a 3,500-person reduction in Eufor suggests that the Bosnia drawdown, while perhaps timely, was not explicitly done to aid in reinforcing Afghanistan.
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, who served in Bosnia, welcomed the statement but there were "lessons to be learned".
He said in Bosnia, there was one Nato soldier for every square kilometre while in Afghanistan, there was one for every 600 sq km.
Although I made the occupation-force-versus-area comparison between Iraq and Bosnia in this discussion of the insanity of our limited Iraq war plan, perhaps the more valid comparison is force to population. When Ellwood refers to "one soldier for every square kilometre", he means the initial NATO force of 60,000 troops that went in in 1995-96. That initial force total amounted to one soldier for every seventy-five citizens. The current NATO Afghanistan force is about 35,000-strong, or one soldier for every 885 citizens. It's not the fifty-fold difference that the area comparison generates, but it's still not good. The rule of thumb for a modern pacification effort is on the order of one soldier per 50 citizens -- Bosnia was right in the ballpark here. That said, Afghanistan actually has reasonably competent, reasonably allied armed forces, so there may well be large areas of the country that can be "written out" of security estimates, much as the Kurdish areas in Iraq typically are.
Unlike in Iraq, I remain cautiously optimistic that an increase in troops in theater will actually help in Afghanistan.
In light of the recent problems at Walter Reed, I was very interested in hearing what the GAO had to say about the VA. In a report titled Veterans' Disability Benefits: Processing of Claims Continues to Present Challenges, the GAO tells us that the VA has actually improved its procedures over the years, but that filing claims and appeals is still an arduous, overlong process, and that the VA's disability policies are probably out of step with the modern world.
As the following chart shows, the VA actually reduced its pending claim backlog in the early 2000s.
However, following a commendable low in 2003 -- the year of the Iraq invasion -- the backlog started to pile up again. By the end of last year, initial compensation claims took an average of 127 days to be processed, up 16 days from the year before, and appeals resolution took an average of 657 days.
Consider that this means that our veterans are currently waiting just over four months to have claims processed, and potentially another two years if they try to appeal a rejected claim. That's a long time to hang out, disabled, waiting for help.
The VA notes that they're receiving quite a few more claims than they used to, due to our pair of wars and other causes:
The increase in VA’s inventory of pending claims, and their average time pending is due in part to an increase in claims receipts. Rating-related claims, including those filed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, increased steadily from about 579,000 in fiscal year 2000 to about 806,000 in fiscal year 2006, an increase of about 39 percent. While VA projects relatively flat claim receipts in fiscal years 2007 and 2008, it cautions that ongoing hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Global War on Terrorism in general, may increase the workload beyond current levels. VA also attributes increased claims to its efforts to increase outreach to veterans and servicemembers. For example, VA reports that in fiscal year 2006, it provided benefits briefings to about 393,000 separating servicemembers, up from about 210,000 in fiscal year 2003, leading to the filing of more original compensation claims. VA has also noted that claims have increased in part because older veterans are filing disability claims for the first time.
Newer claims also take longer to process because they involve harder-to-substantiate conditions, all neurological -- post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and brain injuries (the latter a notable consequence of near hits by IEDs). In processing PTSD the VA runs into specific roadblocks based on the need to substantiate the causative incident(s):
Additionally, claims-processing timeliness can be hampered if VA cannot obtain the evidence it needs in a timely manner. For example, to obtain information needed to fully develop some post-traumatic stress disorder claims, VBA must obtain records from the U.S. Army and Joint Services Records Research Center (JSRRC), whose average response time to VBA regional office requests is about 1 year. This can significantly increase the time it takes to decide a claim.
The VA, aware that its improving outlook has taken a retrograde turn since the invasion of Iraq, has a number of plans to fix the situation. Their fiscal year 2008 staffing request is a 6% increase over 2006 levels. They intend to bring the additional staff up to speed quickly using overtime from regular staff and training led by retired VA employees. They also want to capture more of a servicemember's military records electronically at discharge, so they can cut down on problems such as that one-year wait time from JSRRC. They're also trying to cut down on problems that lead to appeals.
The GAO applauds these efforts, but points out that the VA may have an antiquated idea of just how disability works these days:
Specifically, our research showed that the disability programs administered by VA and the Social Security Administration (SSA) lagged behind the scientific advances and economic and social changes that have redefined the relationship between impairments and work. For example, advances in medicine and technology have reduced the severity of some medical conditions and have allowed individuals to live with greater independence and function in work settings. Moreover, the nature of work has changed in recent decades as the national economy has moved away from manufacturing-based jobs to service- and knowledge-based employment. Yet VA’s and SSA’s disability programs remain mired in concepts from the past, particularly the concept that impairment equates to an inability to work.
If I'm reading that correctly, GAO is pushing in a good direction here. The ability to work in some capacity should not, alone, be a metric that a veteran is no longer in need of assistance and care. We want our injured veterans to return to a real life, not just to survive.
Sixteen Saudia national were transferred from the holding facility at Guantanamo Bay to Saudi Arabian custody this week, following a review process at Gitmo. They follow in the footsteps of sixty-one other Saudis who were previously released from American custody. According to Saudi officials, most of the prisoners who were previously transferred from our custody were subsequently released by the Saudis.
The concept of blood diamonds is now reasonably firmly established in the American mind, and diamond distributors have been pressured into making at least a nominal effort to source their diamonds such that you don't end up buying a diamond that, somewhere back in its supply chain, funded the maiming of civilians.
The current war in Afghanistan provides a parallel situation that is, nonetheless, sharply different. Afghanistan produces almost all of the world's opium, largely from poppy fields in territories controlled by Taliban insurgents. Naturally, this means that the end of almost every heroin supply line ends with cash going directly to those insurgents, and by extension to car bombings, attacks on Afghani police, and suppression of local populations in Taliban-controlled areas. However, the illegal nature of the end product makes it strictly impossible to enforce any kind of pressure on the sourcing of the raw materials. You may be able to buy your engagement diamond from Canada, but you can't choose to buy your heroin from South Carolina instead of Afghanistan. The only remaining options, then, are interdiction and eradication.
Afghan police, with assistance from the United Nations, have been carrying out eradication activities -- or trying to, with the constant challenge that the poppy fields are defended by well-armed Taliban narco-insurgents. They've requested direct assistance from NATO forces in continuing these efforts, but as described in this al Jazeera article, NATO considers drug eradication well outside its Afghanistan mandate, and refuses to participate.
Overall, opium production is likely to continue in Afghanistan well past the cessation of the Taliban insurgency. As long as that insurgency continues, the terrain that supports the hiding of an insurgency will align perfectly with the terrain that supports illicit crop growth, and the money will continue to flow into Taliban hands.
Heroin is a terrible drug, and not one that I feel comfortable advocating pure legalization for, but it surely will continue to be a strategic problem for us if narco-trafficking continues to fund non-state opponents around the world.
An independent panel led by former Liberal minister John Manley has suggested that Canadian troops should remain in Afghanistan "indefinitely," if several key conditions are met. Specifically, he recommends that the Canadian contribution to ISAF should be removed at the end of the current Canadian mandate (that ends in February, 2009) unless:
This report, assembled under the leadership of a Liberal party loyalist for the current Conservative government is expected to carry a lot of weight, especially as the Liberal party is directly opposed to the war effort. Whether the rest of NATO will be willing to pony up the additional troops and supplies is, however, uncertain. As we have seen, George Bush has historically been unwilling to send troops to Afghanistan even when his own officers are begging for more reinforcements, and the Marine Corps has suggested that they could do a lot of good there.
Canada has been an important participant in the war against the Taliban and their associates in Afghanistan, and they've taken concomitant losses as a result - 77, which is on par with UK casualties in that theatre (for reference, the war in Afghanistan has led to 87 UK deaths and 480 US deaths).
Casualty counts from the Operation Enduring Freedom Fatalities Page at icasualties.org.
Prince Harry will be withdrawn a bit early from his deployment to Afghanistan following the revelation that he's there by the Drudge Report. This came on the heals of an apparently accidental initial leak by an Australian magazine that discovered he was in Afghanistan and didn't realize there was a news embargo on the topic.
Of course, they perhaps they should have had the wit to realize not to report it anyway.
Seriously, there's very little immediate news value to the target markets (Australia, Europe, America) to know that a royal is in the field. In contrast, however, there's tremendous news value for this same item if one is a member of the Taleban looking to hit a high-value target in the current Afghanistan conflict. Whereas our interest is mostly celebrity, their interest is of a more problematic nature -- one that ought to have taken precedence.
One interesting comment in the aftermath of this came from a participant in an online discussion hosted by Washington Post's Kevin Sullivan:
One cannot help being struck by the contrast between, for example, former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who said that his five strapping sons were serving America by helping in their father's campaign, and Prince Harry, who not only went through Britain's West Point, Sandhurst, but worked diligently to then get into the fighting. His grandmother vetoed deployment to Iraq, so he went to Afghanistan -- and to one of the deadliest areas, Helmand province.
That's worth recalling later, the next time someone is hawkish with other people's children and a dove with their own.
At the start of the year, an independent Canadian panel led by John Manley suggested that Canada should pull its troops out of Afghanistan unless other NATO nations took up some of the ground combat burden. Specifically, the concern has been not one of pure numbers, but that the Canadians, British, and Americans have been covering the combat zones while other NATO members restrict themselves to relatively more peaceful regions. The Manley panel recommendation was to require another thousand NATO troops in the south as a condition for a continued Canadian presence.
This week, Nicolas Sarkozy pledged additional French troops to the cause in Afghanistan, with specifics to be given next week at a meeting in Bucharest. Here's the quote:
France has proposed a strategy to its allies in the Atlantic alliance to enable the Afghan people and their legitimate government to build peace.
If these proposals are accepted, during the summit in Bucharest, France will propose reinforcing its military presence.
France currently has about 1,500 troops in the region. Sarkozy's remarks shed no light on how many additional troops they plan to send, nor where in Afghanistan they'll be posted.
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