Winning In Afghanistan?
Between the ages of four and nine years of age, I attacked my older brother unprovoked on countless occasions.
My brother was always bigger than me. Stronger. Faster. So 99 times out of 100, these impromptu wrestling matches would result in my utter defeat. Indeed, they often ended embarassingly with my brother slapping my face with my own hands. My long string of losses only ended on the rare occasions when I dared to kick him in the nuts.
It wasn't honourable. And I knew retaliation would be swift and devastating. I did it anyway. Yeah, I was just a little bastard.
No reasonable observer watching these matches would conclude that the sheer persistence of my aggression was equal to victory, or that the unbridled ferocity of my attempted muggings might indicate higher principles were at stake. I was just a kid with a stupid combination of hyperactivity and bellicosity. Fortunately, I had an arch-rival who could firmly yet patiently deal with me, at least until the next attack.
With this odd little family history in mind, I often get a weird sense of the surrealism of most reporting on military affairs in Afghanistan. The good guys keep mopping the floor with the bad guys. But the bad guys just keep coming back like a stupid (in this case, homicidal) kid that can't take a hint.
Many journalists are quick to discount the real progress that NATO and the Afghan National Army have made in securing the country, against an enemy known for all sorts of dishonourable dirty tricks and contempt for the rules of war. At the same time, these reporters give high marks to the Taliban's war effort when the number of attacks spike -- even when those attacks are prone to fail at ever increasing rates.
I wrote about this weird phenomenon in an early bit of fiction for The Propagandist, Meet The New Enemy. Same As The Old Enemy
Now it seems the military trend of the coalition forces in Afghanistan routing the Taliban has become too clear for reporters to ignore. Who knew? The good guys are actually winning:
Beginning in August, Afghan forces spearheaded a clearing operation in Mehlajat, on the southern edge of the city of Kandahar. Soon after, American forces pushed through much of Arghandab, a strategic rural district that leads into the city from the north. At the same time troops from the 101st Airborne Division moved into Zhare District to the southwest, where they initially encountered strong resistance.
By the middle of this month, forces were poised to retake the most nefarious area of all, the horn of Panjwai, an area 19 miles long and 6 miles wide where the Taliban had built up a redoubt of command posts, courts and mined areas over the last four years. Afghan and American troops mounted an airborne assault into the region last weekend.
Apparently surprised by the intensity of the strikes on their supply routes, bomb factories and command compounds, many Taliban commanders pulled out to Pakistan, and most of the fighters have also slipped away or hidden their weapons, NATO commanders, local residents and the Taliban themselves say.
Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, commanding Task Force 1-66 in Arghandab, said he had seen insurgent attacks drop from 50 a week in August to 15 a week two months later. That may be because of the onset of colder weather, when fighting tends to drop off, but Colonel Lemons said he felt the Taliban was losing heart.
“A lot are getting killed,” he said. “They are not receiving support from the local population, they are complaining that the local people are not burying their dead, and they are saying: ‘We are losing so many we want to go back home.’
Onward to victory.
Jonathon Narvey is the Editor of The Propagandist.
