MILITARY STRATEGY SHIFTS
them to stay more than a year, sometimes two. They are usually well briefed in the official narrative that things are improving. But many spend their entire tours inside a fortified embassy.
On paper, the Afghan government and its 40-plus international coalition allies, predominantly Americans, have all the advantages over the insurgents. The Afghan military and police have an authorized strength of 350,000, their payroll funded by international partners. The U.S. military numbers 14,000, a mix of trainers, advisers and Special Operations members.
The Afghans also have their own small air force, and extensive support from U.S. drones, jet bombers and helicopter gunships.
The Taliban have been estimated by U.S. military officials to number 20,000 to 40,000 active fighters, an estimate that has not changed much for years even though the Afghan government claims it has been killing nearly a thousand a month.
The true size of the Afghan military is difficult to assess. The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, a U.S. government watchdog agency, reported in July that the Afghan national army was at 86 percent of its authorized strength, and that all security forces, police, army and specialized units totaled 310,000. The agency also said the attrition rate for the Afghan national army was running at 2 percent a month. If confirmed, that would translate into roughly a quarter of the total per year.
Full data on attrition, which includes desertions, failure to re-enlist and casualties, was now secret, the agency said, a decision taken by the U.S. military, which the agency criticized.
Also classified as secret since last year has been the true casualty toll for the Afghan military. When those figures were last released by Afghan government officials, in 2016, more than 6,000 soldiers and police officers were being killed annually. The outgoing U.S. military commander at the end of 2014, Lt. Gen. Joseph Anderson, called the Afghan government losses, then about 5,000 fatalities a year, “unsustainable.”
Many Afghan officials and military officers say privately that the losses have worsened since then. “Casualties among Afghan forces are higher than they have ever been,” said retired Gen. Atiqullah Amarkhel, a military analyst in Kabul.
If the death toll of the past week — more than 400 Afghan soldiers and police officers — were to continue for a year, the annual total would be triple the worst known year so far.
The Afghan military and its U.S. allies have officially shifted their strategy to one that emphasizes protecting population centers — places like Ghazni city — rather than holding onto territory — places like Ghormach and Ajristan districts, where those army units were overwhelmed last week. The military has been slow to make that shift, however.
As of July 30, the government controlled 58.5 percent of the country, the insurgents 19.4 percent, with the remaining 22 percent contested, according to the U.S. military.
Other information raises serious questions about the accuracy of that data. In Ghazni province, for example, only one of its 19 districts was listed by the U.S. military as under insurgent control. But local officials said last week that only three Ghazni districts were clearly government-controlled.
In northern Kunduz province, and in southern Helmand, Uruzgan and Zabul provinces, most districts are listed as under government control or contested. But in none of them would it be safe for a government official to leave the provincial capital without a heavily armed escort.
Message control
Last week supporters of the Afghan government criticized reporting by The New York Times on the conflict, with some calling it The Taliban Times and questioning the casualty counts. One of our reporters, Fatima Faizi, responded by uploading Facebook excerpts from quotations from government officials — the sources for those figures. Fatima is from Ghazni and at the time her cousin was among those missing in the fighting there. (He was later found, wounded but safe.)
The government’s efforts at message management often collide with an inclination by many ordinary Afghans and local officials to speak their minds. They are often the best sources for information.
When phone service was restored in Ghazni and we finally reached Mohammad Arif Noori, the spokesman for the governor, he did not try to obscure what had just happened. There were too few security forces in the city, he said, and they were using outdated equipment. “The reason most parts of Ghazni city collapsed was a lack of coordination between police and NDS forces,” he said, referring to the National Directorate for Security, a paramilitary intelligence service.
Safe is a relative term
Even parts of the country considered safe have been badly affected. Take Bamian province, home of the standing Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban. Bamian attracted a range of foreign aid groups with ambitious projects: a ski slope to promote tourism; a girl’s bicycle team.
It is no longer possible to go there safely. The last airline that served Bamian, Kam Air, stopped flying this year after many foreign crew members were killed during an insurgent attack on Kabul’s Intercontinental Hotel.
Both roads into Bamian are blocked by Taliban units, in Wardak province and in Parwan province’s Ghorband Valley. “The government has no will to clear the Taliban from Ghorband valley,” said Ghulam Bahauddin Jilani, the Parwan provincial council chairman.
In provinces like Oruzgan where the insurgents have much more support, the situation is even more difficult. Amir Mohammad Barakzai, head of the provincial council there, said officials have asked in vain for more resources to fight the insurgents, who are now are on the outskirts of the provincial capital, Tarinkot. “The Taliban are winning this war,” Barakzai said.
In Helmand province, where the Taliban dominates, Bashir Ahmad Shakirn, head of the security committee, said corruption is the main reason the government does so poorly. “I don’t believe the Taliban are stronger than us, what makes them stronger is the incompetence of our officials,” he said. “Their priority is not winning the war but their personal benefits.”
How this ends
Nesar Ahmad Mehari is the spokesman for the governor of western Farah province, where the capital city, Farah, was overrun by the Taliban for a day in May. Things are better now, he said, as U.S. troops fight with Afghan commandos. But other officials say that in some neighborhoods, insurgents walk around freely. “I think no one will win this war,” Mehari said. “We have seen only destruction and human losses from both sides since 17 years and this will continue for years to come with the same bloodshed.”
U.S. commanders have long since stopped talking about winning in Afghanistan. None see how 14,000 American troops can achieve what 110,000 could not.
Taliban leaders have always insisted that as long as any U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan, they would negotiate peace only with the Americans. But U.S. officials had insisted on an “Afghanowned, Afghan-led process.”
Aides to President Donald Trump, who once called the Afghanistan War a total disaster, have moved to authorize such talks. A State Department official met in July with Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar, according to Taliban officials.
In the past, Afghan officials have opposed that sort of American role, but apparently no longer. “As President Ghani has indicated that he’s ready to pursue something without conditions, that speaks for itself,” said Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, when asked about American-initiated talks during a visit here on July 23. “Everything can be on the table here as we move forward with this Afghan-led process.”
In June, the Afghan government and the Taliban declared separate cease-fires, which overlapped for the Eid holiday that ended Ramadan. The cease-fire was so successful that no violent incidents broke out between Taliban and government sides. (There were some suicide attacks by their mutual enemy, the Islamic State.)
Insurgents came into towns and cities and mingled with locals in a remarkable outpouring of pro-peace sentiment by people on both sides, who were taking selfies with one another. Even women came out to see the insurgents, who once had hounded them off the streets. It was a moment many hope to see repeated, and Ghani has offered another cease-fire for the Eid al-adha holiday that begins Tuesday.
Some analysts think the Taliban’s remarkable push on so many fronts in the past week may actually be an effort by the insurgents to gain as much ground as possible before a cease-fire and any further steps toward peace.
“They can join the peace process in a stronger position, and show they are not doing it due to military pressure,” said Intizar Khadim, an Afghan political analyst.
Others fear that Ghazni and the bloody past week may have made peace prospects dimmer than ever. The final death toll in Ghazni, a senior official told us, was 155 police and soldiers, 60 to 70 civilians, and 430 insurgents. As many as 200 security forces died elsewhere around the country last week. That left thousands of relatives and friends with reasons to harbor hatred.
On the Taliban side, supporters may well be wary of people like Col. Farid Ahmad Mashal, the Ghazni police chief, who posted his own photo on Facebook with the corpses of Taliban fighters. “Do not show any mercy to the enemy,” he wrote on Facebook.