McChrystal wants troop concentration in cities

Washington Post:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top military officer in Afghanistan, has told his commanders to pull forces out of sparsely populated areas where U.S. troops have fought bloody battles with the Taliban for several years and focus them on protecting major Afghan population centers.

But the changes, which amount to a retreat from some areas, have already begun to draw resistance from senior Afghan officials who worry that any pullback from Taliban-held territory will make the weak Afghan government appear even more powerless in the eyes of its people.

Senior U.S. officials said the moves were driven by the realization that some remote regions of Afghanistan, particularly in the Hindu Kush mountains that range through the northeast, were not going to be brought under government control anytime soon. "Personally, I think I am being realistic about this," said Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan. "I have more combat power than my predecessors did, but I won't be as spread out. . . . This is all about freeing up some forces so I can get them out more among the people."

The changes are in line with McChrystal's confidential assessment of the war, which urges U.S. and NATO forces to "initially focus on critical high-population areas that are contested or controlled by insurgents."

The conflict between McChrystal's new strategy and the Afghan government has been most pronounced in Nurestan province, a forbidding region bordering Pakistan where U.S. commanders have been readying plans since late last year to pull out their soldiers and shutter outposts. Instead of leaving the area, U.S. commanders have actually been forced to bolster their presence in recent months.

In early July, Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked senior U.S. officials to dispatch a company of about 100 U.S. soldiers to Barge Matal, a village in the northern half of the province that is home to fewer than 500 people. Taliban insurgents had overrun the community and Karzai was insistent that that U.S. and Afghan forces wrest it back from the enemy. "I don't think anyone in the U.S. military wanted to be up there," said a senior military official who oversees troops fighting in the village.

Senior military officials had hoped to be out of Barge Matal in about a week, but the deployment has stretched on for more than two months as U.S. and Afghan forces have battled Taliban insurgents. Some insurgents seemed to be moving into the area from neighboring Pakistan solely to fight the U.S. troops there, said military officials. At least one U.S. soldier has been killed and several have been wounded.

Although the U.S. finally pulled its troops out of the village this week, the extended deployment to the area has had ripple effects throughout eastern Afghanistan, forcing frustrated U.S. military officials to postpone plans made months earlier to abandon other remote bases.

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I think this is another reflection of the inadequate force to space ratio we have in Afghanistan and the frustration of the military in dealing with that shortage of force. I can also understand Karzai's unwillingness to retreat and leave people to the despotic rule of the Taliban.

This is a radical change in policy for the military in Afghanistan, and it may be explained by the perceived deterioration of conditions in the rest of the country. What the Taliban are doing is disbursing their forces in an attempt to stretch ours. It seems to be working for them at this point, although they are still not capable of contesting our forces.

Not surprisingly, Karzai supports the increase in US troops.