17,000 … and Counting

Even with back-up by the 82nd, though, U.S. forces will still be critically short of helicopters. NATO forces are even less well-supplied. Shortage of air-mobility is a major constraint on operations inside Afghanistan. But it's symptomatic of the more general operational situation in the country: too few troops trying to bring security over too wide an area. This "troop-to-space" ratio will be only marginally bolstered by these latest deployments. 

The upshot of this troop-shortage has been that NATO forces have relied ever more heavily on air-strikes (which the United States has to carry out, since other NATO forces lack air-support). The consequences are revealed by the latest report of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. The U.N. reckons that just over 2,000 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting there last year—a 40 percent increase over 2007. Worse, the U.N. report tallies more than 800 of these as killed by U.S., NATO and Afghan government forces—a 30 percent increase over 2007. Worse still, the U.N. estimates that two in three of these (around 550) were killed by allied air-strikes. That's uncomfortably close to double the toll from air-strikes (around 320) in 2007, which in turn was approaching three times the toll (around 120) in 2006.

It remains true that, by U.N. reckoning, more than half the civilian casualties in Afghanistan last year were inflicted by the Taliban and other anti-government groups. Nevertheless, casualties from U.S. air-strikes are a hugely sensitive issue. (So sensitive that the British have flown back to London, to face possible criminal charges, an Army officer alleged to have leaked some statistics.) Afghan President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly called for Coalition forces to re-think their use of air-power.

The latest polling data explains his concern. Barely one in three Afghans now say that people support the U.S. and NATO forces—half the numbers who did in 2006. Air-strikes appear to be one of the major reasons behind this precipitous drop. Three in four Afghans polled called the air-strikes unacceptable. "The international coalition in Afghanistan is losing public support, one fallen civilian at a time," says a new study from CIVIC, a U.S.-based group which monitors civilian casualties in Afghanistan.    

The U.S. military is acutely aware of this. Adm. Mullen sounded the alarm earlier this week in The Washington Post: "Each civilian casualty for which we are even remotely responsible sets back our efforts to gain the confidence of the Afghan people months, if not years. It doesn't matter how hard we try to avoid hurting the innocent; and we do try very hard. … In the end, all that matters is that, despite our best efforts, sometimes we take the very lives we are trying to protect. You cannot defeat an insurgency this way." But absent enough troops to operate without the continued back-up of air-strikes, the U.S. military will continue to incur civilian deaths, with the strategic consequences Adm. Mullen describes.

In a TV interview Tuesday after his decision to send these extra 17,000 troops to Afghanistan, President Obama said: "I am absolutely convinced that you cannot solve the problem of Afghanistan—the Taliban, the spread of extremism in that region—solely by military means." That's true. It's equally the case, unhappily, that only the military can provide the security needed to put in place the other pillars of a counter-insurgency campaign: jobs, civic works and the spread of good government. Unless his strategic review comes up with some magical formula for success—which seems implausible—Obama will likely find that a commitment of far more than 17,000 troops is going to be needed by the end of this year.

© 2009