COIN fails – Wikileaks proves

COIN fails – Wikileaks proves

Most of the documents released cover incidents from 2004-2008, when Afghanistan was the forgotten front in U.S. foreign policy and U.S. relations with Pakistan were narrowly transactional—deficiencies that the Obama administration has sought to correct since taking office, with mixed results.

Several reports expose concerns about the nature of our partnership with armed Afghan powerbrokers and the Kabul government—issues highlighted in recent CAPwork.

Much of the material presented in the WikiLeaks memos is familiar, but there may be a real security cost in its release, highlighted by National Security Advisor James Jones’sstatement condemning the release as a move that “put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk.”

The principal themes in the data identified by reporters scouring the documents thus farshould be old news to those following public reporting on the Afghan conflict over the past five to six years. There is active Pakistani support for the Taliban insurgency—or at least many U.S. troops in the field and many Afghans speak to that fact. The U.S. military has used covert Special Forces, CIA, and Predator drone teams to target mid-level Taliban leadership in Afghanistan—and have made occasionally fatal mistakes when conducting night raids. There is a proliferation of improvised exploding devices, or IEDs, and a deteriorating security situation for Afghan civilians across the country. Many Afghan police and army forces are inept and sometimes caught in firefights with each other or coalition forces. U.S. forces are struggling to provide development and reconstruction assistance and prop up the dysfunctional Afghan government system.

In one entry excerpted by The New York Times, members of the Paktia provincial council question the value of “democracy” under the current government setup, expressing their belief that corruption is at its worst levels in the country’s history and that positions and punishment are doled out by Kabul and based on bribes rather than merit or representation. Corruption by members of the police and justice sector appears to be a recurring theme, andone account finds that local Uruzgan commander Matiullah Khan, a security contractor for NATO logistics, held up another security convoy and demanded tolls for passage through his territory.

COIN fails – Wikileaks proves

Wikileaks prove the MASSIVE failure of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan--- an endless commitment is not feasible nor desirable

NSN,10 (7/26/10, National Security Network, “Making sense of the leaks,” http://www.nsnetwork.org/node/1677)
Wikileaks highlight difficulties in Afghanistan effort: civilian casualties, drone strikes, growing insurgent sophistication, the role of Pakistan.  The Washington Post summarizes: "Tens of thousands of classified documents related to the Afghan war released without authorization by the  group Wikileaks.org reveal in often excruciating detail the struggles U.S. troops have faced in battling an increasingly potent Taliban force and in working with Pakistani allies who also appear to be helping the Afghan insurgency."  Foreign Policy's AfPak Channel finds "new details about multiple aspects of the war, including civilian casualties caused by international forces, the increased use of sometimes unreliable armed drones, Pakistan's alleged role in supporting various Taliban and militant factions and suspicion of Iranian involvement as well, secret special operations task forces that hunt Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, formerly unrevealed reports that the Taliban may have used heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles against coalition helicopters, and increased evidence that Afghan government corruption is undermining efforts to win over the Afghan population. The collection also documents the alarming rise in Taliban use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), noting that in the period in question that IEDs alone killed approximately 7,000 Afghans."  Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski notes that the documents reveal the complexity of the situation: "The problem with this war is that it is in a very complex setting in which there are no clear cut enemies, nor cut friends...Pakistan is not the enemy... There's going to be pressure to oversimplify what's going on in Pakistan, to portray Pakistan as our enemy, and if we do that then we doom ourselves to failure in Afghanistan because we cannot accomplish our objectives in Afghanistan without having Pakistan with us."

Ease of access, and public demand for openness, is by itself a challenge that 21^st-century national security planners must now take into account. The Danger Room's Spencer Ackerman points out that, "In its granular, behind-the-scene details about the war, this has the potential to be Afghanistan's answer to the Pentagon Papers. Except in 2010, it comes as a database you can open in Excel, brought to you by the now-reopened-for-business WikiLeaks." [Washington Post,7/26/10. AfPak Channel, 7/26/10. Danger Room, 7/25/10. Zbigniew Brzezinski, MSNBC,7/26/10]  

Reports highlight Bush administration failings in Afghanistan, Pakistan.  The New York Times writes, "The archive is a vivid reminder that the Afghan conflict until recently was a second-class war, with money, troops and attention lavished on Iraq while soldiers and Marines lamented that the Afghans they were training were not being paid."  Indeed, from the beginning, the Bush underestimated the required force levels necessary to secure Afghanistan.  According to the New York Times, "[t]he problems began in early 2002... when the United States and its allies failed to take advantage of a sweeping desire among Afghans for help from foreign countries."   According to a Congressional Research Service report from 2008, while the war in Iraq received $608 billion over five years, Afghanistan received just $140 billion over Bush's term in office.  

The neglect was not limited to Afghanistan.  A 2008 GAO report titled The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas found that, "The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan..." and that, "No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed." From the beginning, President Bush adopted a personalist policy toward Pakistan, relying on military dictator Pervez Musharraf.  Teresita C. Schaffer, a Pakistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that the Bush administration's policy toward Pakistan has been "built around one person - and that is Musharraf." After the attacks on 9/11, the Bush administration gave more than $10 billion in assistance to help President Musharraf wage Pakistan's campaign against terrorism. However, Congressional auditors said Pakistan spent little to address the growing insurgent safe-havens in its autonomous tribal belt.  Pakistan expert Steven P. Cohen, said that the U.S. has "wasted several billions of dollars, becoming Musharraf's ATM machine, allowing him to build up a military establishment that was irrelevant to his (and our) real security threat."  [NY Times, 9/06/06. CRS, 2/08/08. GAO,4/08. NSN, 7/24/08. GAO, 4/17/08. NY Times, 8/18/08. Teresita C. Schaffer, 10/20/07]

Leaked material filled with reminders of why an endless military commitment in Afghanistan neither feasible nor desirable; conservatives ignore challenges.  The New York Times reported yesterday that the documents on WikiLeaks comes at a critical moment: "As the new American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, tries to reverse the lagging war effort, the documents sketch a war hamstrung by an Afghan government, police force and army of questionable loyalty and competence, and by a Pakistani military that appears at best uncooperative and at worst to work from the shadows as an unspoken ally of the very insurgent forces the American-led coalition is trying to defeat.  The material comes to light as Congress and the public grow increasingly skeptical of the deepening involvement in Afghanistan and its chances for success as next year's deadline to begin withdrawing troops looms."  The administration and Gen. Petraeus have recognized the importance of establishing a deadline:  "[P]roductivity experts say that there's no greater productivity tool than a deadline...The message of urgency that the deadline conveyed ... was not just for domestic political purposes. It was for audiences in [the Afghan capital of] Kabul, who... needed to be reminded that we won't be there forever."  Conservatives, however, have ignored the realities on the ground and instead pushed for endless war.  [NY Times, 7/25/10. General David Petraeus, via American Forces Press Service, 6/29/10]

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