With the war in Afghanistan continuing into its 18th year, there is an atmosphere of uncertainty surrounding its progress, and a question of what constitutes its objectives. Over the past several years, the subject of the war has shifted more and more to the sidelines of public awareness. Just recently, there has been another change of policy regarding the level of transparency of the war’s status and goals. This shift in transparency reflects both a prudent decision to stop giving free intelligence to the enemy, as well as a desire to push public consciousness of the war further out of the picture - a sign that maybe the war is not going well.
The U.S. Military and NATO have decided to stop releasing a crucial security report to the public. This report provided the district security analysis for Afghanistan; illustrating the most comprehensive picture of the progress of NATO control versus Taliban encroachment and it was one of the “most widely cited Afghan security metrics.” Now, this assessment is no longer available to the public or to outside groups tasked with oversight. For years the U.S. Military has released basic reporting to the public, summarizing how much of Afghanistan is under Afghan Government and NATO control versus the Taliban. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, experts on the war in Afghanistan, the canceling of this report is another attempt by the U.S. and NATO to downplay the Taliban’s strength and the stymied progress towards meeting NATO goals. Follow the FDD’s latest reports here. With the report now canceled, there is no replacement source for providing public understanding about the conflict. The Washington Examiner wrote that “despite its limitations, the control data was the only unclassified metric provided by Resolute Support [the name of the military mission in Afghanistan] that consistently tracked changes to the security situation on the ground.” The public is now at a loss if they want a realistic and comprehensive picture of the security situation in Afghanistan. There are reasonable grounds as to why this information is no longer being released to the public. As Defense One reports, in January President Trump explained his thoughts that this information was providing useful battlefield intelligence to the enemy. “What kind of stuff is this? The enemy reads those reports; they study every line of it...I don’t want it to happen anymore, Mr. Secretary...” Trump said. When considered on the grounds of denying enemy intelligence, President’s Trump’s point of view provides a reasonable justification. However, this change in reporting signals more than just a strategy to sideline public awareness or limit the information available for enemy intelligence. General John Nicholson, a top commander in Afghanistan two years ago, stated that control of the population was “the critical mass necessary to drive the enemy to irrelevance.” The status of control of the population was the central theme of the report, and the central theme of the NATO strategy at the time. But now things are different. Recently, the Defense Department told the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) that the reports are not “indicative of the success of the strategy” toward security and stability for Afghanistan. The goal posts have shifted since the last two years. The Defense Department has explained that it is more important to “focus on the strategy of concluding the war in Afghanistan on terms favorable to Afghanistan and the United States.” NATO and Afghan forces are no longer aiming to secure the territory in Afghanistan as a whole. The current goal of the United States and Afghanistan Government is to create conditions for U.S. withdrawal that will assure Afghanistan will not be used as a hub for future terrorist groups that would target the international community. The goal is no longer necessarily ‘control’ of Afghanistan by NATO and Afghan forces - the central theme to the previous and no longer publicly available metric for success. For the present goal to be achieved, it would require a working relationship with the Taliban - and a political agreement between the Afghanistan Government, the U.S., and the Taliban. But as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies observed “the Taliban has lied about Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan since the 1990s,” and the evidence shows clearly that the two remain tied together to this day. Relying on a supposed agreement with the Taliban seems like a tenuous goal at best. On top of that, in order for the Taliban to be driven to the negotiating table, it would require the Taliban to believe that they are locked in an unwinnable stalemate with NATO forces - since both sides know a NATO victory with the original goal is no longer the objective. Comments are closed.
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