On the occasion of Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington and the beginning of a broad new counterinsurgency operation around the major city of Kandahar, two assessments of the conflict in Afghanistan have emerged that are worth perusing.
One account, provided by Spencer Ackerman, is a description from a Kandahar-based source of a counterproductive counterinsurgency that won't result in victory, concluding that "the enemy still has the discipline to outlast our commitment to the area.” A second, provided by CANS' Andrew Exum, is a declassified government assessment; Exum translates the bureaucratese: "We have halted the Taliban's momentum. Violence is up, but we expected this to happen as we escalated our activities."
The differing accounts reflect both the challenge of trying to create a coherent picture of what is going on in that region and whether America is actually using the right policy levers -- be they military, political, or developmental -- or even has the right levers to change the situation on the ground. (It's a challenge I ran into reporting this story, from earlier in the year, on the problems of the U.S. strategy in the country.) Given the challenges of prediction and even measurement of success, Exum's conclusion -- that it will take another six months to assess the results of the surge in Afghanistan, and particularly how that affects the withdrawal calendar -- is probably accurate. But even then it will be hard to answer whether the mission is worth the cost.
-- Tim Fernholz
