Kandahar

By Steve Coll, April 2, 2010 Friday, April 2, 2010 - 1:23 PM Share

I have a new post on my New Yorker blog about the upcoming offensive in Kandahar and Ahmed Wali Karzai.

As even casual followers of the Afghan war will know, its next big campaign will take place in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, describes Kandahar as being “in this time frame … as critical in Afghanistan as Baghdad was in Iraq in the surge, writ large.” Something like half or more of the thirty thousand additional troops ordered to Afghanistan by President Obama will take part in the campaign. The basic idea is that if international forces can chase the Taliban out of their heartland and gradually replace the current racketeering-infected provincial government with one that is recognized by Afghans as more inclusive and less corrupt, then momentum in the broader war may swing against the Taliban.

The in-theater commanders who briefed reporters travelling with Mullen this week said they did not expect a formal “D-Day” launch of military operations in Kandahar, such as occurred in Marjah earlier this year. The rough timeline for “clearing” operations, i.e., the taking of territory from Taliban control by force, is planned to roll out gradually from late spring until well into the fall. The campaign’s achievements or lack of them will no doubt be a critical element of the review of Afghan strategy due in December. Most of the action will take place in a number of suburban districts of Kandahar where the Taliban are mainly in control. There will also be a rollout of joint U.S.-Afghan neighborhood security stations in Kandahar City, where the Afghan government is notionally in control but Taliban influence is heavy and rising. The plan is attempt to reduce violence and civilian casualties by organizing a rolling series of sub-district shuras in the hope that local power brokers will “invite” international forces to enter and set up control, and will at the same time “invite” the Taliban to scoot. To the extent that this pre-negotiating of clearing operations succeeds, not all of the Kandahar campaign may require a lot of shooting.

For the rest, visit Think Tank.

Steve Coll is the president of the New America Foundation.

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

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ALI S

8:47 PM ET

April 7, 2010

Transparency and honesty

Dear Coll,

During the run up to the Iraq war, the American press and "established" was accused of group think as the purported cause of this massive strategic (not really intelligence) failure.
Reporters for the NYT (eg. Judith Miller) & others routinely wrote articles that were false or misleading to the American public. This led to lack of transparency in our foreign policy, group think, deception, etc... Whatever one may call it - it was a strategic failure and a huge cost in blood & treasure to Americans and Iraqis.

You and other journalists have to be better and more careful about Afghanistan and Karzai. Please do your homework (due diligence) as a professional.

1. Please investigate for your own education and then report for our education why Mr. Peter Galbraith was fired. It is poor journalism to quote a person who has a serious deficiency in credibility ( think Ahmed Chalabi). Mr. Galbraith also demonstrated questionable ethics in Iraq ( his conflct of interest in helping write the Iraq constitution while owning stock worth tens of millions in companies who would benefit from Kurdish oil is as example).

2. Educate yourself about the polling done by the IRI in Afghanistan prior to the election last year. How does one do credible polling in a nation with a 70% illiteracy rate among males, greater than 90% among females, and not much of a telephone system or electricity in the rural areas. How were these "accurate" polls done? What is the IRI? Does it have an agenda? Can it be manipulated?

3. Mr. Karzai has risked his life to be president of Afghanistan. There is no proof, evidence, or data to indicate he is corrupt or doing this for monetary gain. No evidence - curious? His brother is on the CIA payroll and may be corrupt. There is much corruption in this broken and war torn land. But the corruption is no more than Pakistan (Mr. 10% Zardari is the president after all, and the corrupt generals are extraordinary wealthy based on stolen US aid and narcotics).

I could go on, but please consider doing your due diligence on just these 3 points. Reflexive reporting and analysis leads to group think. This leads to bad policy, and this leads to human suffering.
Good Luck. Americans deserve better.