The "Success" at Musa Qala
The right-wing blogs are all a-twitter with the report of the fabulously successful recapture of Musa Qala from the Taliban. Fester at the Newshoggers has already pointed out that the mere fact that they had to launch a division sized combined arms assault to take the small city is a good indication that the Taliban is far more advanced than any insurgent force has any right to be if they were truly suffering major defeats.
But all I could think of when I saw these reports was, that would be this Musa Qala, wouldn't it?
BRITISH troops battling the Taliban are to withdraw from one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan after agreeing a secret deal with the local people.
Over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attack defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight have been killed there.
It has now been agreed the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops.
I'm a little curious that last year's report put the population of the town the British were abandoning at 2,000 and that the population of the recaptured town is 45,000, but it's clearly the same place, and this "great victory" is only, at best, a return to where they were over a year ago. Whack-a-mole isn't an effective counterinsurgency strategy.
Add in the fact that the Taliban "fled", meaning they got away, posits a return to the sniping, mortars, roadside bombs, and other guerilla tactics that drove out the NATO forces the last time, since there is no way they can keep the whole force they used to capture the town on station without ceding other parts of Afghanistan to the insurgency.
Because it is also clear that Afghanistan remains on the back burner so far as the US is concerned.
The U.S. military's top officer acknowledged on Tuesday that for all the importance of preventing Afghanistan from again harboring al-Qaida terrorists, Washington's first priority is Iraq.
"In Afghanistan, we do what we can," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In Iraq, we do what we must."
Tactical victories by conventional armies are expected in counterinsurgencies, but they rarely have any strategic impact. At the strategic level, just taking the town is irrelevant. It's winning over the population that's important. And so far, we haven't been doing a good job of that.
Gates acknowledged, during questioning by committee members, that opinion polls show resurgent support for the radical Taliban, who were overthrown in the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Admittedly, it's gotten worse," Gates said, adding that this appeared to be due to inadequate provision of basic government services and corruption among local Afghan police. He said it does not reflect a lack of U.S. military commitment.
Maybe not a lack of commitment by the US military, but certainly a lack of resources allocated to them, and a strategy that as a result relies heavily on airstrikes and heavy artillery to keep their thinly spread forces from being overrun. That works tactically, but strategically its turning the population against us.
So I'll wait to hear about the next great "success" in conquering Musa Qala, again, in another year or two, with no acknowledgement of why we keep losing it, and why the strategic situation keeps slipping away from us.
