Pessimistic NIE on Afghanistan coming after election?

NY Times:

A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.

The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.

The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.

Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan’s most vexing problems are of the country’s own making, the officials said.

The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan’s national army, the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms what it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin trade, which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan’s economy.

The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on the war in Iraq has been misplaced.

Inside the government, reports issued by the Central Intelligence Agency for more than two years have chronicled the worsening violence and rampant corruption inside Afghanistan, and some in the agency say they believe that it has taken the White House too long to respond to the warnings.

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Richard Willing, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which produces the national intelligence assessments, declined to comment for this article. A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, also declined to comment on the report’s conclusions but said: “Everyone understands that the current situation in Afghanistan is a tough one. That’s why the president ordered additional troops there. That’s why we’re increasing the size of the Afghanistan Army.”

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The timing of this leak is very similar to the timing of a leak of a negative intelligence report on Anbar right before the 2006 election. That report turned out to be dated since the Anbar awakening was already underway while the media was suggesting that Anbar was already lost. It is possible that the same could be happening in Afghanistan, since we still are not certain of the consequences of the Pakistan move against the Taliban bases which has killed a significant number of the enemy and disrupted their sanctuaries. It will be several weeks before we know how that shakes out.

One thing that seems clear to me is that the Afghan army is way too small. With only 60,000 troops compared to the Iraqi army's 400,000 it is hard for them to get the kind of force to space ratio needed to deal with an insurgency. Our force levels also need to be increased.

The Taliban are not capable of defeating our troops are even the Afghan army troops. The are basically a light infantry that uses RPGs as artillery along with some light mortars. In most engagements with our forces the Taliban winds up suffering significant casualties when our air assets are brought in to finish them off. The Taliban's only defense to these air attacks is to claim civilian casualties in hopes that Karzai or the liberals in Washington will stop the air attacks that are killing them.

The Taliban's main advantage is ambiguity as to time and place of attack on non combatants. This is why it is so important to have a high force to space ratio so that they can be intercepted in their movement to contact. Such a high farce to space ratio also permits greater protection of the people whoich leads to significant improvement in actionable intelligence.