The U.S. military has taken a lot of heat in Afghanistan over airstrikes that target Taliban leaders but in some cases kill civilians. In the most recent airstrike in the remote Afghan province of Ghor, the U.S. military targeted a Taliban commander they say has links to Iran's Qods Force.

The U.S. military thought they killed Mullah Mustafa along with 16 Taliban fighters, but later reports indicate Mustafa is still alive. The governor of Ghor province is now claiming 12 Taliban fighters and 10 civilians were killed in the attack. The U.S. military maintains that no civilians were killed, but refuses to release the evidence that supports their case:

But American officials Friday said the strike killed up to 16 militants and no civilians. A spokeswoman, Elizabeth Mathias, said the strike hit a vehicle “in the middle of nowhere, away from civilians and homes.” She said the military has a video showing the strike hitting the militants away from populated areas, but the military will not release it because its source cannot be revealed.

The military's refusal to declassify video of incidents such as the strike in Ghor is a major reason the Coalition is losing the information war in Afghanistan. The military is concerned the methods that are use will compromise future intelligence gathering operations, but in the process, the narrative is ceded to the Taliban or to civilian leaders who have a vested interest in inflating or manufacturing civilian deaths. After all, the U.S. military pays well if civilians are killed. To be clear, civilians are often killed during airstrike against Taliban, but in many cases the casualties have been hyped.

Unless the military had a special operations team nearby filming the attack (unlikely as the military said Mustafa's convoy was observed moving from his compound to a "the middle of nowhere"), there is little reason to keep this video classified. Everyone, including the Taliban, knows that UAVs are in the sky and watching. Until the military learns to shake its hangups and quickly declassify strike video to counter the negative narratives, they will continue to lose the information war.

Remember the near-revolt at the State Department when then-Secretary Rice announced that diplomats might be compelled to take assignments there in late 2007? Here is what a senior diplomat said at the time. Note his revulsion in being deployed to a war he doesn't believe in:

"Incoming is coming in every day, rockets are hitting the Green Zone," said Jack Crotty, a senior foreign service officer who once worked as a political adviser with NATO forces. [...]

"It's one thing if someone believes in what's going on over there and volunteers, but it's another thing to send someone over there on a forced assignment," Crotty said. "I'm sorry, but basically that's a potential death sentence and you know it. Who will raise our children if we are dead or seriously wounded?"

"You know that at any other (country) in the world, the embassy would be closed at this point," Crotty said to loud and sustained applause from the about 300 diplomats who attended the meeting in a large State Department auditorium.

Fast forward to today, when the U.S. wants to execute a civilian surge in Afghanistan to accompany the military surge. Guess what? The more things change, the more things stay the same. State and other civilian government employees don't want to go to Afghanistan, which we are told is the good war, the war that everyone supports, the real battle against al Qaeda:

The Obama administration is finding that it must turn to military personnel to fill hundreds of posts in Afghanistan that had been intended for civilian experts, senior officials said Wednesday.

In announcing a new strategy last month, President Obama promised “a dramatic increase in our civilian effort” in Afghanistan, including “agricultural specialists and educators, engineers and lawyers” to augment the additional troops he is sending.

But senior Pentagon and administration officials now acknowledge that many of those new positions will be filled by military personnel — in particular by reservists, whose civilian jobs give them the required expertise — and by contractors.

But unlike the kerfuffle over Iraq, which was characterized as being related to political opposition to the Iraq war, today's civilian surge fiasco is being blamed on a lack of resources:

The shortfall offers more evidence that the government’s civilian departments have not received enough money to hire and train people ready to take up assignments in combat zones. Unlike the armed services, nonmilitary agencies do not have clear rules to compel rank-and-file employees to accept hardship posts.

Of course the burden to make up for the shortfall of civilian volunteers falls on our soldiers, and in this case, our reservists, thanks to our elite's unwillingness to shoulder a small fraction of the burden of the so-called good war.

The media is conducting serious mental gymnastics in an attempt to tout reconciliation with the Taliban. This headline from Reuters, "U.S. holds out olive branch to non-violent Taliban," really takes the cake. This headline raises the question: If there are non-violent elements of the Taliban, why would the U.S. and Afghan governments need to offer them an olive branch?

To her credit, Secretary of State Clinton, who is quoted in this Reuters story said no such thing. In fact, she said the goal should be to reach out to the elements of the Taliban that are reconcilable -- the opportunistic or nationalist elements that have latched on to the Taliban movement. But by no means are these "non-violent Taliban".

This is far easier said than done, however, and is one of the real areas of weakness I see in President Obama's plan for Afghanistan. A reconciliation program has been in effect for years in Afghanistan, and thousands of Taliban fighters and low level leaders have taken advantage of it. But the middle and upper echelons of leadership are by and large committed to the cause. And my guess is very few of them, if any, are non-violent.

Barack Obama will unveil his plan for Afghanistan Friday. Mike Allen reports that the new plan will include 4200 more troops, as well as civilian reinforcements. (See Goldfarb on the politics of the plan here.)

Allen writes:

The plan is at the heavier end of the spectrum of possibilities the White House considered, according to several top officials briefed on the plan.

A minimalist approach would have focused on counterterrorism and providing security past national elections later this year. An even more robust approach would have included a broader counterinsurgency campaign and an even longer and more idealistic commitment to the central government.

John McCain warned against such a "minimalist" approach in a thoughtful speech at the Brussels Forum last weekend. And he laid out his vision -- a compelling one, in my view -- for a more aggressive counterinsurgency strategy.

A narrow short-term focus on counterterrorism, by contrast, would repeat precisely the mistakes we the United States made for years in Iraq prior to the surge, with the same catastrophic consequences. Before 2007 in Iraq, American Special Forces had complete freedom of action to strike at terrorist leaders, backed by more than 120,000 conventional American forces and overwhelming airpower. Although we succeeded in killing countless terrorists – including the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq – the insurgency continued to grow in strength and violence. It was not until we changed course and applied a new approach – a counterinsurgency strategy focused on providing basic security for the people and improving their lives – that the cycle of violence was at last broken.

One indication of the extraordinary success of that strategy in Iraq is this fact: "Iraq didn't come up once," reports someone who traveled with McCain. "Amazing what a year and a surge will do."

Indeed.

Anand Gopal of the Christian Science Monitor kindly responded to last week's post on the so-called negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban and the Haqqanis. Anand notes that last year's "negotiations" in Saudi Arabia clarified that what really is going on here is simply contact and one-sided peace plans destined to go nowhere, and not meaningful negotiations:

I came across your Weekly Standard piece and I think it raises a really important question. You are right--in October I wrote that there were no negotiations. This is because the meeting in Mecca was between former Taliban and the government, and there were no actual Taliban present. Without the two antagonistic sides, we can't really call it negotiations in any way. What happened over the next months is that this group of former Taliban reached out to the current group. They did so by putting forth a set of terms that the Taliban would accept but that we in the west would never agree to (such as stopping key counter-insurgency methods like house raids). So then the Quetta Shura (Mullah Bradar specifically) and the Haqqanis came around.

But the fundamental point is that as long as extremely slanted deals like this one get proposed, groups like the Haqqanis will be open to talking. Absurdly, the deals don't even ask for the insurgents to stop fighting or planting bombs.

The way I see it is that neither side has really publicly offered anything to the other side except surrender, disguised as "negotiations". The government has said that the Taliban should respect the constitution and drop their arms, which would amount to a surrender. The Taliban has said that the foreign troops should leave, which would basically amount to a surrender on our part. So these mediators tried to come up with something more amenable to an actual agreement. Hence the "roadmap" I mentioned. But the problem, as I see it, is that it is basically designed to be favorable to the Taliban, not the US/Kabul. I guess this is because the Taliban are in a favorable position. Anyway, I'm guessing this isn't really going to get anywhere, as long as we in the West have the will to keep fighting.

So in sum, I agree that it's really "contact", more than real, sit-at-the-table negotiations. That's why I tried to qualify it in my story as "preliminary negotiations", although I can see how that might be a muddy term.

The election of President Barack Obama led many to believe that the Europeans would change their tune on Afghanistan and beef up the NATO forces deployed there. Just one day after President Obama’s inauguration, both France and Germany, Europe’s two largest powers, have signaled that no additional troops are in the cards:

France's defence minister said Wednesday said Paris had no plans to send more troops to Afghanistan, despite plans by US President Barack Obama to step up the pressure on a resurgent Taliban.
"As far as France is concerned, we have made the necessary efforts and there is no question, for now, of considering extra reinforcements," Defence Minister Herve Morin told French radio Europe 1.

And:

Germany is among European nations bracing for demands from the new US administration that they do more in Afghanistan, but the Germans are reluctant to send more troops and believe talks on a new strategy for stabilizing the country are the main priority.

Chancellor Merkel has said that she would not accede to any request from the new US administration to send troops to southern Afghanistan, the scene of much of the heavy fighting against Taliban insurgents. "Wherever Germany commits itself, a wholeness of military and civilian assistance should be visible," she said.

NATO isn’t meeting its obligations to send police trainers to Afghanistan, and those who are there often have "no transport, no armoured vehicles and no money," one NATO official complained to Reuters. Experts believe that there is little chance of NATO significantly increasing troop levels. The result may lead to the fracturing of NATO.

But Michael O'Hanlon of Washington's Brookings Institution think tank saw little hope for more than a 10 percent increase in European troop numbers, and said that would not go down well the other side of the Atlantic.

"The European rationale for why it's hard to do more will not be met with a great deal of American sympathy -- and will especially fail to impress American voters, who will be disappointed that Obama's style of leadership does not elicit more genuine burden-sharing," he said.

Bob Jackson of London's Chatham House think tank said that in turn could lead to fresh U.S. disillusionment with NATO. "If the Germans, the Spanish, the Italians, the French aren't going to find a cooperative strategy with the United States, what's the point of keeping NATO? The United States will just go it alone," he said.

Despite President Obama’s popularity in Europe and particularly among the political elites, European governments will continue to act in their own self interests. President Obama has declared Afghanistan the central front against al Qaeda, and without NATO assistance, U.S. troops will be left manning the bulk of the front, just as they did in Iraq. The vast majority of NATO countries have tired of the Afghan mission, and no amount of hope will change that.

Yesterday the Taliban conducted a heinous suicide attack in the eastern Afghan province of Khost. A suicide car bomber detonated his explosives outside of a government center just as a group of school children was passing by. A U.S. military surveillance camera captured the bombing, and the Department of Defense released the tape to the Associated Press.

Watch the video, you will see the suicide bomber weaving through the barriers designed to slow down vehicles. The school children are walking against the wall on the right, and are in clear view. The suicide bomber clearly had a view of the children - he was moving slowly enough. Yet he detonated his bomb just as the line of children passed by his car.

Today, the Taliban took credit for the attack, claiming "at least 20 American and puppet terrorists were killed and more than 50 were wounded, and the building was destroyed."

The statement praised the attacker, identified as Afghan Qari Hameedullah, claiming he had rammed a "explosive-laden vehicle into a puppet Afghan government building."

Perhaps the Taliban didn't see the video of their suicide bomber blowing up those puppet school children.

Recent reports from Afghanistan claimed the Taliban are willing to negotiate with the Afghan government and NATO forces. A report in Iran's Press TV said Mullah Omar offered a seven point plan to end the insurgency, which was sent to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. The plan, according to the news outlet, called for a phased withdrawal of NATO forces, power-sharing with the Afghan government, integration of Taliban forces into the Afghan Army, and immunity for Taliban fighters.

While this all looks good on paper, Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban has flatly rejected reports that negotiations are underway.

"The fact is that the Islamic Emirates has neither held any negotiations in Saudi Arabia or in the United Arab Emirates and neither anywhere else," the Taliban's Website quoted Omar as saying in a statement.

"I neither have sent any letter addressed to Saudi... King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz, or to the opposite side (Afghan government) and neither have (I) received any message from them."

The statement added that whatever was being said on this issue was false and part of a propaganda campaign by vested interests.

On the last point, Omar is correct. There has been a concerted effort by ex-Taliban officials to claim the Taliban is willing to negotiate. And it is an open secret that NATO is searching for a way to split the Taliban from al Qaeda, so there should be little doubt these claims are being promoted by Western intelligence services.

While splitting the Taliban from al Qaeda would aid in the fight in Afghanistan, the problem is that such propaganda isn't isolated to the combatants in Afghanistan. The "Taliban is willing to negotiate" meme has taken hold among western elites, and this belief can lead to bad policy decisions. NATO countries looking for a reason to disengage from Afghanistan will push negotiations that will lead nowhere.

As U.S. forces prepare to "surge" an estimated 20,000 soldiers and Marines into Afghanistan, the focus in the media has largely centered on where the forces will deploy. Will they be placed in the East along the border with Pakistan to stem the flow from the Taliban infested tribal areas? Will they be deployed to the provinces surrounding Kabul, where the Taliban is tightening a noose around the capital? Will they go to the South, where some of the most intense fighting occurs? Or will they be spread throughout the regions?

One question that is rarely asked is how the additional forces will be used. When fighting an insurgency, the way the troops are used is far more important than the number of troops in theater. The "surge" in Iraq was successful largely because the U.S. military and Iraqi forces decided to live amongst the people to provide security rather than operate from large bases. The additional 30,000 U.S. troops enabled U.S. commanders to get more troops out into the field and gave the commanders additional flexibility to take the fight to al Qaeda and the wider insurgency.

Unfortunately in Afghanistan, the United States and NATO have learned little from the success in Iraq, and are still largely operating from large bases (there are of course exceptions to this, but as a whole, combat power is concentrated in large bases). My friend Tim Lynch, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan for almost five years,says this is a major mistake and the primary reason we have not been successful in curbing the Taliban insurgency.

This problem is demonstrated with the military's application of the Human Terrain Teams, or HTTs. These are the teams of social scientists attached to U.S. military units that are tasked with mapping out the tribal structures and how they can be leveraged to succeed in defeating the Taliban. Tim provides a scathing critique of the HTTs and how they operate, and then explains this is part of the risk-averse culture that exists with much of the U.S. military in Afghanistan. This paragraph sums up the problem in Afghanistan nicely.

America cannot bring security to the rural population of Afghanistan if every time they interact with that population they treat them as potential enemy fighters. The military believes “force protection” is the job number one and I have listened to officers wax eloquent on the subject of protecting their men and woman no matter what because this country is not worth the noble sacrifice that their young troopers would represent if they lost life or limb here. I have used all my self control to avoid kicking these idiots in the teeth which is what they deserve. That kind of thinking will lead to our defeat just as certain as day follows night. It is ridiculous and based on an inflated self centered egotism which I find alarming. Infantry officers are paid to think – to think about the best way to beat those who ask for it while maintaining the cohesion and high morale amongst their troops. The job of military leaders is to spend blood, American blood, and spend it wisely in pursuit of the missions and objectives given them by their civilian masters. I know what those masters have said is our mission in Afghanistan. I also know the current American TTP (tactics, techniques and procedures) do not in any way support the mission they have been given and in fact do the exact opposite by alienating the very population we are supposed to be “winning.” I might be being a little harsh here but how else do you explain the performance of our military to date?

Lest you think Tim is being overly harsh on the U.S. military, it must be noted is a retired Marine officer who has spent much of his five years in Afghanistan outside the wire. He regularly meets with tribal leaders to gauge the security situation in the areas he works in. He isn't asking anyone to do what he isn't doing already.

Tim says we need to stop operating from the big bases and get the HTTs meeting with tribal leaders at the district level. To do this, small, specialized teams of warfighters and problem-solvers must live at the district level to understand and deal with the local problems.

Afghanistan's president raised quite a few eyebrows yesterday when he insisted he would provide safe passage to senior Taliban leaders for negotiations, including Taliban supreme leader Mullah Omar. The Taliban responded immediately to Karzai's offer, rejecting it of course.

Mullah Bahadar, the Taliban's second-in-command, insisted NATO forces must leave. "As long as foreign occupiers remain in Afghanistan, we aren't ready for talks because they hold the power and talks won't bear fruit," he told Reuters. "The problems in Afghanistan are because of them."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid also weighed in. "The Taliban's (leadership) decided they will not take part in any peace talks with Karzai or Karzai's administration until such a day when foreign forces leave Afghanistan," he told the Associated Press. "The Taliban will pursue jihad against foreign forces and (Karzai's) government."

Combined with other rejections of offers to talk, it is safe to say the senior Taliban leadership has no interest in negotiations. So why did Karzai make the offer? Slate's Fred Kaplan comes close to figuring it out:

Two inferences can be made from [Karzai's offers to talk to Omar]. First, Karzai is not really proposing anything; Omar has no interest in negotiating for peace, and Karzai certainly knows this. Second, he made the remarks in Kabul after returning from a meeting in London, so he may have meant them for domestic consumption—as a demonstration that he's not a puppet of the West.

There is another component to this: Karzai has to show the Afghan people he has repeatedly offered the olive branch to the Taliban, and that it is the Taliban leadership that refuses to sit down and talk.

Kaplan then asks if there are any Taliban that can be turned. The answer is yes, but the current focus on peeling off low mid-level Taliban leader and their fighters is not a new effort. In may of 2005, the Afghan government established the Tahkim-e-Solh program (Strengthening Peace) that did just that.

I saw this program in action in June of 2006 when I was embedded with the Canadian Army in Kandahar. The Canadians coaxed a Taliban leader named Mullah Ibrahim, who was influential in the Panjwai and Zari districts, the birthplace of the Taliban. At the time, the Strengthening Peace program had peeled off 1,569 low and mid-level Taliban leaders and fighters over the course of a year.

So the effort to pull in the rank and file of the Taliban really is nothing new. So what changed? The media has finally started to pay attention to Afghanistan after years of dwelling on Iraq. And so has the U.S. military.

Over the weekend, the Pakistani government closed down the vital border crossing to Afghanistan in the Khyber tribal agency. The decision was made after the Taliban hijacked and looted a convoy of vehicles transporting supplies and two Humvees to NATO forces in Afghanistan. The crossing was reopened today after Pakistan said it would provide military escorts for the convoys.

Attacks on NATO convoys have risen dramatically the past month. More than 70 percent of NATO’s supplies pass through Khyber, making this route the key supply line for our forces in Afghanistan. With the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan’s northwest worsening, NATO’s main supply route will increasingly be threatened.

The United States is looking for alternate routes, but these come at a cost: poor infrastructure along the alternate routes in the central Asian countries or China. Plus, the United States would have to rely on Russian or China to keep its troops in Afghanistan supplied. The reliance on these rivals for our lifeline to Afghanistan will come at a cost in other theaters vital to the United States’ national security.

There is much talk of a “surge” for Afghanistan to deal with the spiraling violence and the resurgence of the Taliban. Some experts, such as David Kilcullen, say we don’t need a surge in forces, but need to rethink how we are using our forces in Afghanistan. No matter what the answer is, until we secure our supply lines through Pakistan, the U.S. and NATO forces currently there are in danger of being choked off. Richard Fernandez sums up this problem well:

The two major issues raised by the situation are 1) the future of Pakistan’s ability to keep its territorial integrity and 2) the viability of the lines of communication between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It’s no use talking about a Surge in Afghanistan if the supply lines to the sea are largely cut. Pakistan has to be fixed first.

The Pentagon is planning to expand the number of air bases in the remote regions of Afghanistan’s south and east, USA Today reports. The bases will allow the U.S. military to sortie more of the deadly unmanned Predator and Reaper aircraft that provide surveillance and striking power for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bases are needed “particularly in the rugged mountain area near the border with Pakistan” as the region “has seen some of the toughest fighting for U.S. troops.”

The article focuses on using the Predators and Reapers to support U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, but the USA Today misses the elephant in the room. The U.S. military and CIA have been conducting covert airstrikes into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas that border eastern Afghanistan, primarily with unmanned Predators and Reapers. The strikes have skyrocketed over the past year after President Bush loosened the restrictions on striking inside Pakistan. U.S. intelligence is deeply concerned the next attack on the West will be hatched in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

The United States has conducted at least 28 airstrikes and cross-border attacks in Pakistan in during 2008 (you can see the current list here). Twenty-one of these attacks have occurred between Aug. 31 and Nov. 7. At least four senior al Qaeda leaders have been killed in these attacks. In comparison, there were only 10 recorded strikes during 2006 and 2007 combined.

The big question is whether or not President-elect Barack Obama will continue the current policy of hitting al Qaeda and their Taliban allies inside Pakistan. The Pakistani government has already implored Obama to halt the attacks. Obama has run on a platform that emphasizes a kinder, gentler foreign policy that stresses diplomacy. He also promised to be aggressive inside Pakistan. He will soon learn that being “liked” and “respected” by the international community often conflicts with vital U.S. national security interests.

President-elect Obama's most confounding national security challenge may not lie with our enemies, but rather our allies.

Michael Yon writes

Most of our allies are not very helpful. With the exception of the British, Canadians, Dutch, and a few others such as the Aussies, we are not fighting this with an “A-team” of international allies. With a few exceptions, our allies on the ground are comprised of several dozen countries that mostly refuse to fight. The bulk of NATO amounts to little more than a “Taliban piñata.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is proving nearly worthless and provides no credible threat to armed opposition groups (AOGs) in Afghanistan. Most of the NATO member countries seem to break out in a cold sweat at the mere mention of “Taliban.” They piled in when the war looked easy and largely humanitarian. But now that it’s getting harder and more dangerous, they would like to pile out.

In addition, Obama will have to figure out a way to harden the softening alliance against a newly aggressive Russian Bear. The invasion of Georgia, much like Afghanistan, forced NATO to take a hard look inward. The same western European member states vetoed the assimilation of Georgia into the treaty organization--a move that ultimately led to the Russian invasion of South Ossetia--also have refused to engage the enemy in Afghanistan.

Nearly all of the NATO nations spend less than 2 percent on defense, compared to the United States' 4 percent. The British Admiralty is in a state of open revolt with the Labour government over their neglect of the Royal Navy. German Special Forces--constrained by politicians at home--have been forced to let high-value Taliban commanders slip away. And French carrier based fighters take the weekends off.

The alliance is weak. Defense bureaucrats at home know it. Our enemies know it. So here's hoping that Obama can forge all of that newfound goodwill abroad into steely determination on the battlefield.

On the heels of a successful mission in Kandahar, which cleared the area of hundreds of Taliban fighters, U.S. and Afghan forces dealt a second major blow to insurgents in the past week:

U.S.-led forces rained fire for two days on militants near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, officials said Monday, killing about 55 insurgents and underscoring how fighting with Taliban insurgents is escalating.

The battle in eastern Paktika province was the second in the past week to reportedly inflict major casualties on militants, whom Afghan officials insist are swarming in from strongholds in Pakistan.

Pakistan's government on Monday reiterated an offer to fence the craggy, 1,500-mile frontier--a project begun but abandoned last year amid criticism that it would only enrage the tribes who straddle the frontier and among whom the Taliban find many recruits.

Yes, why would anyone risk upsetting the terrorists by building a wall to keep them away? Until President Karzai dismisses such frivolous concerns, successful battles will not translate into long-term stability.