Afghanistan Correction: US Military "Marjah NOT a Bleeding Ulcer"

Yesterday we featured Gregg Carlstrom's incisive comment that, months after the loudly-trumpeted US "offensive" in Helmand Province, the Taliban might be re-establishing influence in Marjah. Part of Carlstrom's analysis was based on an article by Dion Nissenbaum of McClatchy News Service, including this comment from the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal (pictured), as he toured Marjah, "This is a bleeding ulcer right now."

Afghanistan Analysis: The Taliban Return to Marjah (Carlstrom)

Well, there has been an illuminating sequel, with the US military taking McClatchy to task for misleading reporting:

Dear Mr. [Mark] Seibel [McClatchy managing editor],

I am writing to you today so that we might come to some agreement about what this command views as a mischaracterization in Dion Nissenbaum's article entitled "McChrystal calls Marjah a 'bleeding ulcer' in Afghan campaign" and other variations on that theme.

The key part of that dialogue that Dion witnessed was "You don't feel it here, but I'll tell you, it's a bleeding ulcer outside." That would have been further clarified by the quote Dion asked to use (which did not appear in the final edited copy) about Gen. McChrystal being asked in Europe and the U.S. whether we are failing. The essence of the comment is not that Marjah itself is going badly: as he said to Dion in a follow on interview on the plane ride back to Kabul — it's largely on track. It's that it's misperceived to be going badly. It's a distinction, but one I'm sure you grasp and one that could have been better conveyed, even accounting for the motive of wanting to generate interest in the story using the sensational quote: "McChrystal calls for action against perceptions of 'bleeding ulcer' in Marjah," etc....

Based on the exchange between Dion and Gen. McChrystal's personal PAO, Lt Col Tadd Sholtis, we had every reason to expect a story about mixed progress throughout Central Helmand and an effort to keep operations moving at as rapid a pace as possible against the various challenges. Instead, post-editing, one must read some 14 paragraphs into the story in order to get anything that suggests the picture is mixed, and you need to go 40 paragraphs into the story in order to get anything that explains Gen. McChrystal's actual intent in the dialogues quoted. The elements of a balanced story are there, but with the way it's organized we didn't get one....

Respectfully,

Gregory J. Smith, Rear Admiral, USN
DCOS Communication
NATO International Security Assistance Force Afghanistan

Note the rather strained effort by the military's PR staff to put up even a "mixed" situation --- a sharp contrast to the declarations of victory last autumn. Roy Gutman, McClatchy's foreign editor, strips away the rhetoric in his reply to Smith:

In the context of the [article's] opening anecdote, which suggested that outside pressures are intense and political leaders have limited patience, the further exchange Gen. McChrystal had about force levels and the facts on the ground, Marjah is a very problematic place in the short term. It adds up to being a "bleeding ulcer."

Afghanistan Analysis: The Taliban Return to Marjah (Carlstrom)

Gregg Carlstrom writes for the Majlis:

One of the people I interviewed [at the Al-Jazeera forum in Doha, Qatar] was Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, the Taliban's former ambassador to Pakistan (his new autobiography is a worthwhile read).

We were talking about the Kandahar offensive (sorry, process) after the interview, which elicited a laugh from Zaeef. He held out his right hand to signify the US troops pushing into Kandahar, then drew a semicircle in the air to symbolize the Taliban. "They will not find us in Kandahar. We will go around them and attack them from behind."

Afghanistan, US Media, and Elections: Marching Orders to Protect the War (Mull)

I thought of this line when I read Dion Nissenbaum's disheartening (and entirely predictable) account [in McClatchy News Service] of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's visit to Marja last week. The takeaway:

There aren't enough U.S. and Afghan forces to provide the security that's needed to win the loyalty of wary locals. The Taliban have beheaded Afghans who cooperate with foreigners in a creeping intimidation campaign. The Afghan government hasn't dispatched enough local administrators or trained police to establish credible governance, and now the Taliban have begun their anticipated spring offensive.

McChrystal blames Marja's persistent insecurity on an insufficient number of troops. That's certainly part of the problem: 15,000 troops is an awfully small number to secure a sparsely-populated province like Helmand. A larger NATO presence would help keep the Taliban from returning.

But notice one of the key points in Nissenbaum's article: the Taliban are returning, meaning that the much-hyped operation in Marja didn't significantly weaken the Taliban in southern Afghanistan -- it simply displaced them. The US could send more troops to Helmand, but those troops (like the entire ISAF mission) would be on a finite timetable. The Taliban could simply wait them out, as they've done during prior Helmand offensives.

Read rest of article....