US Army Intelligence: We're Losing In Afghanistan (and Al Qa'eda is Not Reason Number One)

Amidst all the flurry of Presidential announcements and Congressional hearings on Pakistan-Afghanistan, this is the most important document to sneak onto the Internet this week.

Wikileaks has posted a report of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command, circulated on 1 March 2009. TRADOC is based in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where General David Petraeus developed his counter-insurgency approach before returning to Iraq in 2007 and then becoming head of US Central Command.

The document is burdened by acronyms, not to mention confusion over the numerous insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan, but a careful reader can pick out the high (or low) points:

"Permanent Taliban presence [heavy Taliban/insurgent activity now amounts to 72% of the total landmass", as of November 2008. The figure in 2007 was 54%.
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2009/04/04/afghanistan-leaks-and-lies/
"4 main highways into Kabul compromised by Taliban; Taliban infiltrate Kabul at will."

"IEDs [improvised explosive devices attacks rose late summer 2008 and continued to rise in 2009....Winter violence are at highest levels since 2001 invasion."

The number of US troops Killed in Action rose 50 percent in 2008.

All of this is depressing but unsurprising. Even more revealing are some other numbers and statements that will not be mentioned by any Obama Administration official:

Number of Al Qa'eda in Pakistan-Afghanistan: 2,000. On its own, that figure is frustrating --- how many members does it take to constitute a "global terrorist organisation" --- but it takes on some significance when compared to Taliban in Afghanistan (30,000), the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan led by Baitullah Mehsud (15,000); the [Jalaluddin] "Haqqani Network" (unknown, "numbers are included in Taliban of Pakistan‟s total strength"); and "Warlord Militias" (tens of thousands).

The most significant role of Al Qa'eda, according to the document, is to provide "funding, foreign fighters and other assistance" to an "enemy [which] is primarily Pashtun in nature and Sunni Muslim (Wahhabi and Deobandi)". However, the insurgency is also funded by drug economy and Gulf Arab money.

"This enemy is trained and assisted by ISID or ISID affiliated elements". The acronym hides the impact of the statement: "ISID" is Pakistan's intelligence services, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

Syd Walker blogs that the report is "more like a teenage scrapbook than an official ‘Intelligence’ document....It might work as a motivational Powerpoint Presentation for rookies." He's got a point, given the analysts' attempt to get over complexity with an "Insurgent Syndicate" linking, rather than differentiating, between Al Qa'eda and local movements (not to mention inaccurate conflations of those local movements, such as the asserted alliance between the "Haqqani Network" and Baitullah Mehsud).

Still, the devil of significance is in the detail lurking in the pages. And it's that detail, beyond the spectral 2000 Al Qa'eda, that show the shallowness of an Obama rhetoric of "an al Qaeda network that killed thousands on American soil" and is "still plotting today".

Comments

[Jinjirrie]

The realpolitik is disturbing - how can the US / NATO win given the nature of the terrain and insurgency arrayed against it? Clinton last week attempted to offer an olive branch to the http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1166477/U-S-peace-offer-Afghanistan-lunatic-idea-says-Taliban.html" rel="nofollow">Taliban whose spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid sneered and said it was a "lunatic idea".

"The Taliban is able to strike almost with impunity in most of the country, even up to the outskirts of the capital, Kabul."

The continued aggression of the US in Pakistan in particular is likely to incite further outrage and resistance. The US runs a very real, dangerous risk of radicalising Pakistan. Will the US perservere in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/oil-pipelines-are-the-new_n_178715.html" rel="nofollow">hope of maintaining its Pipelinestan dreams?

Perhaps it's time Obama looked seriously at the adversary's very real grievances instead of adding petrol to the bonfire - at the top of the list, the Israeli occupation and aggression against Palestinians, followed by the US presence in Muslim lands.