Small footprint success in Afghnistan, large footprint success in Iraq

Rory Stewart writing in the NY Times gets it half right:

AMERICA and its allies are in danger of repeating the mistakes of Iraq in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and even some Republicans are insisting on withdrawing from Iraq and sending more troops and resources to southern Afghanistan. The Bush administration’s gloomy National Intelligence Estimate last week on the fight against Al Qaeda will only lead others to make such calls.

But they should think again. The intervention in Afghanistan has gone far better than that in Iraq largely because the American-led coalition has limited its ambitions and kept a light footprint, leaving the Afghans to run their own affairs.

Much has been made lately of setbacks and the resilience of the Taliban. But given its history, Afghanistan is doing relatively well. International terrorist training camps have been eliminated (or at least pushed across the border to Pakistan); national wealth has nearly doubled in the last five years; Kabul’s population has expanded from less than a million in 2001 to almost four million today.

It seems ground is broken on another huge blue-glass commercial building every week. The wage for an unskilled laborer in Kabul is now $4 a day, four times that in neighboring Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Millions of Afghan refugees have returned home at a time when Iraqis are fleeing Iraq. The central regions of Afghanistan are safe enough for foreigners to travel alone unharmed.

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Where he is wrong is that the small footprint strategy actually failed in Iraq even though it was a success in Afghanistan. The Democrats are getting it wrong on both fronts. Most of the military criticism of the Iraq effort has been over the failure to have an adequate number of troops in the theater. Now that the surge is in place and an effective counter insurgency operation is in place we are getting excellent results in Iraq as Donald Lambro reports:

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American and Iraqi forces have cleared several terrorist-infested areas, including Anbar Province. Large swaths of Baghdad have also been made safer as a result of the surge of U.S. troops.

"The level of violence is down in the two areas where the 'surge' is focused, Anbar and Baghdad," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said last week.

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Perhaps the most important evidence the surge is having an effect is that the terrorist attacks have declined or stopped where U.S. forces have focused their enforcement efforts.

Since President Bush initiated the surge earlier this year, al Qaeda has stepped up its attacks in some places. But overall, sectarian killings, total car bombings and suicide attacks fell in May and June.

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What is becoming clear is that the strategy that works in one country can be very different from the strategy that is required in another. For too long we went with the small footprint strategy in Iraq where it was very costly. We had to buy the same real estate multiple times because we did not have adequate troops to hold hat we had taken. Now that we have enough US and Iraqi troops to protect the neighborhoods we are also getting much better intelligence which is leading to the killing and capture of more al Qaeda operatives. A large footprint in Afghanistan would lead to more opposition from Afghans. The Taliban is suffering its second straight year of defeats in Afghanistan. At some point it will realize that its fight is hopeless. This year it has already attempted to change its tactics, but its new human bomb attack effort has had no more success. It is in fact counter productive in Afghanistan.