Smoke signals

(A delayed part three in a series...)

Rajiv Chandrasekaran's September 14 report from Afghanistan in the Washington Post details the deteriorating situation in Kandahar:

The slow and quiet fall of Kandahar, the country's second-largest city, poses a complex new challenge for the NATO effort to stabilize Afghanistan. It is factoring prominently into discussions between Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the overall U.S. and NATO commander, and his advisers about how many more troops to seek from Washington.

"Kandahar is at the top of the list," one senior U.S. military official in Afghanistan said. "We simply do not have enough resources to address the challenges there."

I began this discussion last weekend, with part one here and the second installment here. This concluding segment was planned for Monday morning, but into my inbox popped an email from the Washington Post - it seemed they were publishing a copy of General McChrystal's report...

But as you can see from the quote above, this discussion was headed somewhere very close to that anyway. The remainder of this post will be in a form only slightly different than originally intended.

Shortly after he took over as the overall U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, McChrystal asked his subordinates why more than half of the 21,000 troops deployed this spring were sent to neighboring Helmand province instead of Kandahar. The implication was clear, according to a person familiar with the discussion: Kandahar requires more forces.

The question itself is actually one any new commander would ask about anything and everything: why are we doing it this way? Certainly on a topic of that import - why are our troops here and not there - he would want to know the reason - whether he agreed with it or not. As with so many other stories about General McChrystal this week we are left with the reporter's description of what some unnamed individual says about something the General said. Assuming all is as described, all we know is that a question was asked - whatever answer the General was given, and any response he might have offered in turn, is not included.

There are good reasons to put troops in Helmand, not the least among them the consideration that it's where the poppies grow - a significant source of insurgent funding. And there were good reasons not to immediately put troops in Kandahar; among them the potential to have control over what could swiftly become an isolated fortress - but only after a likely battle with high numbers of civilian and military casualties. ISAF forces would find themselves on an (admittedly densely populated) island in a sea of badlands and no-go zones. Meanwhile the trade in the cash crop helping to fuel the Taliban could thrive. I'm not privy to the actual decision process, but I offer that as a quick glance possibility of what could be a small part of the larger answer to the question why here and not there. Aside from that, at this point a review of part two may be worth the reader's while.

But what have we here? - Three days after Chandrasekaran's story Joe Klein presents what amounts to a re-write (right down to the anecdote about Dand) of Chandrasekaran's WaPo piece in Time. However, the tone is different - Klein describes what he calls the "Kandahar screwup":

Upon his arrival in Afghanistan as McKiernan's replacement last June, General Stanley McChrystal was pretty much presented with a fait accompli: the troops were arriving in Helmand. "The ship was moving in that direction," a military expert told me, "and it would have been difficult to turn it around." Indeed, it would have taken months of planning to change course. The additional troops were needed immediately to blunt the momentum of the Taliban and also to provide security for the Afghan elections. The trouble was, the troops would have been better deployed in Helmand's neighbor to the east -- Kandahar province, especially in Kandahar city and its suburbs.
<...>
What can be done now? The military will want more troops to paper over its strategic mistake.

Again, the similarities in the stories are remarkable, but Klein's takes a markedly different tone, and infers (or outright draws) conclusions that aren't evident from the earlier report. This is not, however, a case of plagiarism - it appears more like a response to a perceived challenge. As noted in part one, Chandrasekaran has been in Afghanistan covering the military, and Klein in America covering politics.

Josh Foust, an experienced and knowledgeable Afghan hand, says Klein's effort "reflects the same old bad assumptions about Afghanistan I've almost given up trying to correct" - but somehow draws this conclusion from it too:

But shame on McChrystal, for stealing another man's thunder, then playing a victim of circumstance when things didn't break his way. That's pathetic.

Except that neither Klein or Chandrasekaran (whose earlier piece Foust might not have seen) cite McChrystal (beyond second- or third-hand quotes) at all. That said, I can see how someone could get that impression from Klein's effort. But why, one might wonder, would a guy like Klein, who is as close to a well-connected, experienced political insider ("my predilictions are obvious") as you're likely to find in journalism today, want to create that impression of McChrystal?

Or was he sending a signal that there is an easy way out (if you're willing to blame the last guy)?

And that's where I was with that story when news of the McChrystal report broke. Frankly, if it seems at first glance to have answered any of the above questions, on longer review it does not. Coincidences can have many explanations - including coincidence.

But a few more loose ends remain to be tied down. Herschel Smith makes the case for Helmand first by way of a critique of Klein here, and takes note of Klein's use of a John Nagl quote re: Kandahar - "It is as important now as Fallujah was in Iraq in 2004." Mr Smith's response is that Fallujah was much worse - but bad is different than important. In fact Kandahar is important - and allowing it to become as bad as Fallujah in 2004 is undesirable to say the least. But because Helmand is also important, this puts ISAF in an obvious bind. The earlier decision that Kandahar can wait may have been correct - but no one should have any illusions that anyone thought the claim would be true forever. (And McKiernan, we should recall, requested more troops than he got. While it's less clear, McChrystal did have time - admittedly minimum - to redirect forces if he had significant misgivings - agreement here.) Regardless, with each passing day of status quo, Kandahar approaches Fallujah - the Fallujah of the day before we went in (some argue it is there).

Mr Smith has never noted a problem whose cause couldn't be traced to insufficient numbers of Marines - and fixed by more. That last part has a kernel of truth, but there are other considerations.

Kandahar has not been completely ignored. Kandahar is the name shared by a city, a province, and an air base in Afghanistan - located near the city. (That last by way of saying if you hear a GI say he spent a tour in Kandahar make sure you understand what he means.) Generally media reports from the area will quickly point out the proximity of the big FOB to the failing city, but that's simply a known and painful truth - ISAF forces are a rare presence in the city. But the Canadians have been in the area for some time - and more recently they've been augmented by U.S. troops. They operate in areas around the city (as Chandrasekaran makes clear and Klein does not) though still in fewer numbers than required for effective results (beyond where they are at the moment).

The Canadian milblog The Torch is an excellent source for a lot of information on Kandahar and the Canadians (and Americans, too). And for a very sharp POV from someone who's been there, check out BruceR's site flit. Of particular interest to our current discussion, note this post from before the "release" of the McChrystal report, and this one from after.

NEXT: Smokescreen