Afghanistan Feature: How Will US "Withdraw" When It Has 550 Bases? (Turse)

Camp BagramAfghanistan may turn out to be one of the great misbegotten “stimulus packages” of the modern era, a construction boom in the middle of nowhere with materials largely shipped in at enormous expense to no lasting purpose whatsoever. With the U.S. military officially drawing down its troops there, the Pentagon is now evidently reversing the process and embarking on a major deconstruction program. It’s tearing up tarmacs, shutting down outposts, and packing up some of its smaller facilities. Next year, the number of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition bases in the southwest of the country alone is scheduled to plummet from 214 to 70, according to the New York Times.

But anyone who wanted to know just what the Pentagon built in Afghanistan and what it is now tearing down won’t have an easy time of it.

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Afghanistan: Has NATO Airstrike Killed 17 Civilians? (Al Jazeera English)

UPDATE 0815 GMT: Two suicide bombers have killed at least 22 people and wounded about 50 civilians at a bazaar near Kandahar, according to local police.

The explosion occurred near the city's airport, which houses a large NATO airbase, in an area used by vehicles carrying supplies for the international force. The police said an attacker drove a motorcycle packed with explosives into the area, while another attacker detonated bombs after approaching on foot.

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Al Jazeera English reports:

A local Afghan official has said that 17 civilians have been killed in a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan.

In a statement, NATO said it knew of only two light injuries to civilians during the pre-dawn incident on Wednesday.

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Afghanistan Special: How the US Kills Its Allies and Helps a New Taliban Generation (Fitzgerald)

Certainly, the killing of Sahib Jan and the rise of a new generation of more militant Taliban  both point to a severe lack of "granular understanding of local circumstances". What is curious is that American officials and observers have been talking about granular understanding in Afghanistan for years. The author of the Times piece, Scott Atran, is an anthropologist, and it was anthropologists such as Montgomery McFate and David Kilcullen who advocated aid to intelligence-gathering by sending social scientists to map the "human terrain" in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Four years into the "human terrain systems" programme, why is it still possible for special forces to target a "reconciled" Taliban? Why is ISAF inadvertently killing off those Taliban with whom it is possible to negotiate?

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Afghanistan: Taking Apart the Latest "We're Routing the Taliban" Story

On Wednesday, Carlotta Gall of The New York Times posted a glowing account of progress in the war against insurgents in southern Afghanistan, "

The unadulterated story of victory --- "The Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base" --- was accompanied by other cheers of We're Winning, almost nine years after the US had supposedly won in Afghanistan.

Specialist observers, however, thought that the real victory might be that of a propaganda offensive by the US military, and they were not ready to join in the celebration. Joshua Foust wrote, "This disconnect between military spin and ground reality is not only dangerous, it is insulting."

We asked EA's new Afghanistan correspondent David Fitzgerald to look over the evidence and give us an analysis.

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Afghanistan: Aid Groups "Security Deteriorating" (Nordland)

Rod Nordland writes in The New York Times:

Even as more American troops flow into the country, Afghanistan is more dangerous than it has ever been during this war, with security deteriorating in recent months, according to international organizations and humanitarian groups.

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