The Taliban have lost the hearts and minds battle in Afghanistan

Craig Charney and Gary Langer:

There is a note of panic in American views of Afghanistan today. "All the indicators for Afghanistan have headed south," the Los Angeles Times editorialized. Outside Kabul, "much of the rest of Afghanistan appears to be failing again," Newsweek reported. Sen. John Kerry warned: We are "losing Afghanistan."

These views reflect the belief that Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government is hemorrhaging support as the Taliban makes a comeback. Karzai is called the "mayor of Kabul," his government lacking authority outside the capital and plagued by corruption. Western troops backing him are said to face widespread hostility.

Yet the full picture in Afghanistan's rugged terrain is more complex. A nationwide ABC News/BBC World Service survey of 1,036 Afghans last month found both good signs and bad.

The Taliban, while active, lacks popular support. Though Karzai's honeymoon is over, he retains majority backing. The Afghan state is relatively weak, but it is present -- and popular -- in most of the country. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan is a country where the populace favors the U.S. and allied military presence.

There's no upsurge of support for the Taliban. Just 10 percent of Afghans hold a favorable opinion of the Muslim extremists, almost unchanged from 2005 and 2004. Taliban supporters are concentrated in the southeast and east, conservative regions bordering ethnically similar parts of Pakistan, where the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies have moved their camps and leaders.

This year Taliban forces, flush with trainees, materiel, and bomb designs and tactics learned from al-Qaeda in Iraq, surged into nearby regions -- the southwest, heart of the illegal opium trade; the center-east, which includes Kabul; and the warlord-ridden northwest. Today 64 percent of Afghans report some Taliban activity in their own area. While 58 percent still call security better now than before the Taliban's ouster in 2001, this figure has fallen by 17 points since last year.

The Taliban's reappearance is cause for grave concern -- and not only to Americans. Afghans overwhelmingly prefer Karzai's government to the Taliban, 88 percent to 3 percent. But 57 percent call the Taliban the biggest danger facing the country -- up sharply from 41 percent last year. Its growing presence is broadly unwanted.

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If it were an election poll that would be a rout that even a communist dictator would love. The fact is that the Taliban have almost no popular support and depend on intimidation and murder for what they do have. The suggestion that the US is losing in Afghanistan is utterly ridiculous. Not only is the US supported government still much more popular than the Taliban, but the Taliban have been losing decisively in every engagement with US and NATO troops. For a small unpopular organization, there losses have been significant. Were it not for their sanctuaries in Pakistan, the group would already be destroyed. To complete that destruction something is going to have to be done to eliminate the sanctuaries in Pakistan. The the Paks cannot or will not do it, then the US and its allies should finish the job.

What this article demonstrates if the fundamental error of most reporting on this war. Too many reporters focus on the fact of an enemy attack rather than the effect. There is an assumption in the media that we are losing when the enemy is still able to attack. But if all the attacks are failed attacks, as is the case with the Taliban, then clearly it is the Taliban that is losing the battles. This unfair media standard has been going on since the 1968 Tet offensive. The military needs to do a better job of making the case that enemy failed attacks are not a defeat for the US.