Fighting Intensifies in Afghanistan

The never-ending conflict with the Taliban in Afghanistan has intensified in the last few months and in response the number of U.S. airstrikes has increased. Amazingly, our forces are now carrying out more airstrikes in Afghanistan than in Iraq, by a wide margin:

As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East.

The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs.

The airstrikes between early March and late May concentrated on two areas -- the provinces of the south-central mountains that are the Taliban's major redoubt and eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, where al-Qaeda and its allies operate. But U.S. warplanes have also hit targets near the capital of Kabul, near the main U.S. base at Bagram, and near other major cities such as Jalalabad and Ghazni.

The attacks have been executed by aircraft ranging from large B-52 bombers to small Predator drones, and have employed attacks including 2,000-pound bombs and strafing.

The disparity is of course not due to the fact that our forces are engaged in hotter fighting in Afghanistan. Rather, it is the direct result of a lack of enough troops on the ground to challenge and destroy Taliban fighters in ground combat. Note this statement from the Washington Post article:

The U.S. military and its allies have started "going into areas that haven't been gone into with a lot of forces," most notably, Freakley said, in Konar province, north of Jalalabad.

Or in other words, there are areas of Afghanistan that are presently uncontested by coalition and U.S. forces. This is not a recipe for putting down an insurgency. And this pargraph, quite frankly, stuns me:

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan, said the Taliban have gone from operating in company-size units of about 100 men last year to battalion-size units of about 400 men this year. Some recent airstrikes have targeted those troop formations, contributing to the sharp rise in the total.

It is not possible for me to overstate the significance of the fact that Taliban fighters can move around in units of 400 men with what they must certainly regard as impunity. It is incredible to me that at this point, after 5 years of on-and-off war in Afghanistan, the Taliban can roam any significant portion of Afghanistan in formations so large. What's next? Military parades?

The short-comings of the over-used airstrike-as we've discussed here-is also mentioned in the article:

In late May, the Taliban occupied a village 20 miles from Kandahar, prompting some of the U.S. airstrikes, including one that killed at least 15 civilians. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for an investigation of the incident and asked the top U.S. military commander in the country, Army Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, for an explanation.

"We go to great pains to limit any kind of casualties among the civilian population," Freakley said.

And I'm sure they have. But as we noted, it is simply impossible for an air campaign to be carried out that can be relied upon to destroy insurgent forces without causing undue civilian casualties. At the very least, inaccurate intelligence results in the bombing of homes that may or may not house Taliban forces, but almost certainly house civilians. And one of the basic tenets of counter-insurgency warfare is that you don't go blowing up people who you are trying to win over to your side. But the fact of the matter is that, thanks to the war in Iraq, we simply do not have enough forces in Afghanistan to successfully engage and destroy the Taliban. Each year the Taliban has grown in strength from it's near-destruction in 2001, and each year we find ourselves in the position of fighting a continuing holding action against the Taliban. The long-term outlook for Afghanistan isn't nearly as bad as the one in Iraq, but at the same time our lack of concern over Afghanistan prevents us from devoting the resources we need to finally secure the country. While casualties remain relatively low, thus preventing the calls to leave that we're now hearing in Iraq, fighting a continuous war against the Taliban that appears to have no end in sight without a major shift in resources, is simply untenable. Let me state it plainly: until we are willing to devote ourselves fully to the destruction of the Taliban and the securing of a peaceful Afghanistan, we will find ourselves mired in a low-grade guerilla warfare until we get sick of it and leave. Whether that's in a year, or five, or ten is unknowable, but it's simply a matter of time.