Petraeus “ The progress achieved has put us on the right azimuth to accomplish the objective...Afghan forces in the lead.....by the end of 2014.”

Slow and steady progress is being made in a world where people expect overnight results... What we see in Afghanistan is along the lines of what occured in Iraq.

The issue now will be to build upon what has been accomplished and make sure we provide an ability for the Afghans to defend their own country from the threats within and in their region.



Petraeus: Taliban momentum halted in Afghanistan, but harder fighting ahead

By William Branigin,
Tuesday, March 15, 11:26 AM
Washington Post

Gen. David H. Petraeus told lawmakers Tuesday that the U.S. and NATO forces he commands in Afghanistan have halted the Taliban’s momentum in much of the country, but he predicted difficult fighting ahead as the radical Islamist insurgents try to regain lost territory in a spring offensive.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Petraeus said that the “hard-fought achievements in 2010 and early 2011” by U.S. and NATO forces have permitted a recommendation to shift lead security responsibility to Afghan forces in several provinces this spring.

He said these achievements also are important as he prepares to “provide options and a recommendation to President Obama for commencement of the drawdown of the U.S. surge forces in July.” He referred to Obama’s Dec. 1, 2009, speech at the U.S. Military Academy in which he pledged to start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan in July 2011 at a pace to be determined by conditions on the ground.

In addition, Petraeus said, “the progress achieved has put us on the right azimuth to accomplish the objective agreed upon at last November’s Lisbon Summit, that of Afghan forces in the lead throughout the country by the end of 2014.”

The general’s comments come amid declining U.S. support for the Afghanistan war effort, which began in the fall of 2001 following al-Qaeda’s Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting.

In an opening statement at Tuesday’s hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said that in view of the poll, the next few months could be “decisive” as winter turns to spring and NATO forces “face a renewed Taliban offensive to retake territory lost on the battlefield.”

McCain, the top Republican on the committee, said the United States “needs to be exceedingly cautious about the withdrawal of U.S. forces” starting in July. “We should not rush to failure, and we should cultivate strategic patience,” he said.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, said the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan depends on the growth and capability of the Afghan security forces. He pointed to what he called a hopeful sign in “the increasing support of the Afghan people” for their security forces. He agreed that this spring’s fighting season could be an “acid test” as the Taliban tries to reverse recent losses.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) lamented the decline in U.S. popular support even though “we are succeeding in the Afghan war.” He attributed such sentiments more to continuing frustration over the domestic economy than to the actual situation in Afghanistan, and he said that “we have to remind the American people why we are in Afghanistan, why it’s worth it, and we are succeeding.”

In response to questions, Petraeus said he has not yet decided on the scope of the withdrawals that are to begin in July. But he expressed support for the concept of starting the drawdown then because “it undercuts the narrative of the Taliban that we will be there forever” and sends a message of urgency to the Afghan government.

He said he has requested resources to increase the Afghan security forces by 70,000, building on the growth “in number and capability” of those forces in the last couple of years. He said the growth is projected to bring the size of the Afghan forces to as many as 378,000, with a floor of at least 352,000.

Petraeus said the assessment by the NATO command in Afghanistan is that “the momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.” He added: “However, while the security progress achieved over the past year is significant, it is also fragile and reversible. Moreover, it is clear that much difficult work lies ahead with our Afghan partners to solidify and expand our gains in the face of the expected Taliban spring offensive.”

Petraeus said U.S. and NATO forces, working with Afghan partners, have “stepped up the tempo of precise, intelligence-driven operations to capture or kill insurgent leaders.” He said about 360 “targeted insurgent leaders” are killed or captured in a typical three-month period. He also cited successes in clearing the Taliban from long-held safe havens, including “such critical areas as the districts west of Kandahar city that were the birthplace of the Taliban movement, as well as important districts of Helmand Province.”

A program to reintegrate “reconcilable” insurgents has also shown promise, Petraeus said, noting that “we and our Afghan partners cannot just kill or capture our way out of the insurgency in Afghanistan.” He said that “some 700 former Taliban have now officially reintegrated with Afghan authorities, and some 2,000 more are in various stages of the reintegration process.”

The general expressed concern, however, that “levels of funding for our State Department and [U.S. Agency for International Development] partners will not sufficiently enable them to build on the hard-fought security achievements of our men and women in uniform.” He warned the committee, “Inadequate resourcing of our civilian partners could, in fact, jeopardize accomplishment of the overall mission.”

braniginw@washpost.com

Confirmation that the "GO HEAVY" approach is something General Petraeus & I agree on

There was a tell-tale indicator that something was going on over the last month as the press were all sent back to Kandahar and embeds were curtailed. That is the kind of thing that gets a Desert warrior's attention as it is not what usually passes for the rules out in the AFGHN.

Something I featured in the following post from October-

http://usnavyjeep.blogspot.com/2010/10/go-heavy-or-go-home.html

I agree with the approach as the terrain the Taliban are hiding on and we are hitting is NOT the kind of place where you can effectively patrol or expect to be able fight like you can in the open desert. The places we hit are where billygoats would be the ideal mode of transport if there were billygoats big enough to ride around on.

Glad to see that after a few months out of country my ability to sense when a SHITESTORM was due to hit the AOR has not dulled....Glad to see General Petreaus & I see things eye-to-eye on this approach as it is time to send the Taliban Cockroaches to their final resting place - post haste!

Bombs Away: Afghan Air War Peaks With 1,000 Strikes in October
By Noah Shachtman - Wired.com

November 10, 2010 12:25 pm Categories: Af/Pak

The U.S. and its allies have unleashed a massive air campaign in Afghanistan, launching missiles and bombs from the sky at a rate rarely seen since the war’s earliest days. In October alone, NATO planes fired their weapons on 1,000 separate missions, U.S. Air Force statistics provided to Danger Room show. Since Gen. David Petraeus took command of the war effort in late June, coalition aircraft have flown 2,600 attack sorties. That’s 50% more than they did during the same period in 2009. Not surprisingly, civilian casualties are on the rise, as well.

NATO officials say the increase in air attacks is simply a natural outgrowth of a more aggressive campaign to push militants out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan. “Simply put, our air strikes have increased because our operations have increased. We’ve made a concentrated effort in the south to clear out the insurgency and therefore have increased our number of troops on the ground and aircraft to support them in this effort,” Lt. Nicole Schwegman, a NATO spokesperson, tells Danger Room.

On the other hand, some outside observers believe the strikes are part of an attempt to soften up the insurgency before negotiations with them begin in earnest. But one thing is clear: it’s a strategy Petraeus has used before. Once he took over the Iraq war effort, air strikes jumped nearly sevenfold.

Next month, the Obama administration is set to review the strategy for the Afghanistan campaign. Petraeus’ newly-aggressive approach will almost certainly part of that examination. It’s a dramatic reversal from Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s strategy, which drastically restricted the use of air power — even when troops came under fire.

But the new general is doing more than launching an expanded air war. He’s also unleashing special operations forces to go after militants on the ground. According to Petraeus’ team, those commandos conducted more than 1,500 operations in 90 days ending October 21. 339 insurgent leaders were killed or captured, as were 3,444 militant footsoldiers.

The ultimate goal of this aggression, ironically, may be a peace deal. The New York Times’ Dexter Filkins is one of several veteran observers of the war that sees the push as “a coordinated effort by American commanders to bleed the insurgency and pressure its leaders to negotiate an end to the war.”

But in the meantime, more innocents are getting caught in the cross-fire. Schwegman emails Danger Room that “while our air strikes have gone up, our incident rate of causing civilian casualties has actually decreased. As you know, our main principle in our counterinsurgency strategy is to protect the civilian population first and foremost.”

According to NATO statistics, however, 49 by-standers were killed or wounded by coalition forces last month, compared to 38 last October. It’s an increase of 30%. The militants’ civilian toll has gone up at a similar rate. But the insurgents have been far more ruthless, far more callous about innocent life. They killed or wounded 322 civilians last month — four times as many as the coalition.
NATO has escalated its air campaign in Afghanistan before — most notably in the early summer of 2008, when coalition aircraft went on 2,366 attack missions. But each rise has been followed by a dip, often because the civilian costs of the air operations grew too high. In 2004, for example, then-commander Gen. David Barno halted all pre-planned air operations after a number of the strikes went awry, slaying innocents. “I was very concerned that if killing local Taliban leaders with airstrikes produced civilian casualties, the tactical benefit would not offset the strategic damage it did to our cause,” Barno later said. After U.S. aircraft killed as many as 97 civilians in a single incident in May 2009, McChrystal imposed his tight guidelines on air power. Whether a similar constriction will happen after this current air campaign remains to be seen.