Afghan insurgency spreading
While most people are distracted by the latest emanations coming from Obama's former pastor in the continuing Democratic Fratricide of 2008, (on which admittedly I spend far too much time on myself.), the situation in the already mostly forgotten war in Afghanistan grows steadily worse.
The insurgency in Afghanistan has not been "contained," Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell testified before a Senate subcommittee in February. "It's been sustained in the south, it's grown a bit in the east, and what we've seen are elements of it spread to the west and the north."
A recent study by Sami Kovanen, an analyst with the security firm Vigilant Strategic Services of Afghanistan, echoed this assessment. He reported 465 insurgent attacks in areas outside the restive southern regions during the first three months of 2008, a 35 percent increase compared with the same period last year. In the central region around Kabul there have been 80 insurgent attacks from January through March of this year, a 70 percent jump compared to the first three months of last year.
The numbers are part of a nationwide trend of rising violence. In the southern and southeastern provinces, including the insurgent hotbeds of Kandahar and Helmand, guerrilla attacks spiked by 40 percent, according to Mr. Kovanen's research.
Kabul itself has been largely free from the violence, but as Sunday's attack shows, there are signs that the Taliban's presence is growing here, too. On the sprawling, serene campus of Kabul University, where the nation sends many of its best and brightest, the Taliban has reached an unprecedented level of influence, students say.
Given NATO is already stretched way past its limits, and that only a few countries are actually willing to place their soldiers in highly volatile areas where combat operations are necessary, the spreading insurgency holds the distinct possibility of causing the entire operation to collapse.
What that will mean for Afghanistan or the situation across the border in Pakistan is anybody's guess, but I doubt it will be pleasant.
This is why it's a bad idea to dig yourself deeper and deeper into a hole.
