Author-journalist Ann Marlowe writes in a WSJ op-ed that we are courting disaster in Afghanistan. She fingers the failure of Team Obama to prevent Hamid Karzai from winning a fraudulent election--the loser being a leader more honest and more -pro-US. Also Team Obama is not getting the necessary Pakistani push against Taliban in Pakistan tribal areas. Marlowe says that from 2002 - 2006 policy was mostly headed in the right direction, but now there is too much focus on the military and not enough on the civilian side.
An NY Times piece details the mess that is the Afghan police:
One in five recruits tests positive for drugs, while fewer than one in 10 can read and write — a rate even lower than the Afghan norm of 15 percent literacy. Many cannot even read a license plate number. Taliban infiltration is a constant worry; incompetence an even bigger one.
After eight weeks of training, an average of 5 percent of recruits cannot pass firearms tests — but are given a gun and sent out to duty. Unsurprisingly, the Afghan National Police have the highest casualty rates of all the security forces fighting the Taliban; 646 died last year, compared with 282 Afghan Army soldiers and 388 NATO troops, according to NATO figures.
The death rate, poor pay and lack of equipment are among the reasons that a fourth of the officers quit every year, making the Afghan government’s lofty goals of substantially building up the police force even harder to achieve.
“They say the numbers prove ‘the Afghan National Police are in the fight,’ ” said General Burgio, quoting a frequently heard mantra from NATO officials. “This is not true. Usually the police are killed in ambushes, not because they were sent out to fight, but because they have no armored vehicles, for instance.
There is good news: the US commanders recognize the problems. Now all they have to do is fix them.
The NY Times reports that Gen. Stanley McChrystal said that the Afghanistan surge has prevented further deterioration in the military situation. For their part, the Taliban flatly rejected any peace deal with the government.
Bottom Line. Failure in Afghanistan would deal a huge blow to American prestige--the worst since the debacle in Vietnam.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Foreign Policy
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