Petraeus spin on roadside bombs belied
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - General David Petraeus claimed limited success this week in the
war within a war over the Taliban's planting of roadside bombs, but official
Pentagon data show the Taliban clearly winning that war by planting more bombs
and killing many more United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) troops since the troop surge began in early 2010.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Tuesday, the United
States commander in Afghanistan asserted that the use of improvised explosive
devices (IEDs) by the Taliban had "flattened" over the past year and attributed
that alleged success to pressures by the US military, and especially the
increased tempo of Special Operations Forces raids against Taliban units.
Data provided by the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization
(JIEDDO), however, show that IEDs planted by Afghan insurgents killed nearly
40% more US and NATO troops in the first eight months of 2010 than in the
comparable period of 2009.
The data also show that Taliban IEDs wounded 2,025 US and NATO troops in the
first eight months of this year - almost double the 1,035 wounded in the same
months last year.
In the Journal interview, Petraeus said that the data on violent incidents in
Afghanistan indicate a slowly improving security situation.
Without putting his statement in quotation marks, Journal reporters Julian E
Barnes and Matthew Rosenberg reported Petraeus as claiming that the use of IEDs
"has generally flattened in the past year". While crediting US military
operations with this alleged improvement, Petraeus said it is too soon to say
that they are the sole reason for this alleged flattening of IED incidents.
But the data for 2009 and 2010 provide no support for Petraeus' "flattened"
description.
The 12-month moving average of IED incidents, provided in a report in July by
the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the basis of JIEDDO data,
shows a continuing and sharp increase from 250 in June 2009 to more than 900 in
May 2010, for an average increase per month of 54 incidents.
The total number of IED incidents in Afghanistan began to rise steeply in March
2010 to a new high of 1,087 and then continued to climb to 1,128 in May and
again to 1,258 in August.
In a related effort to spin the IED issue more favorably to the war effort,
Major Michael G Johnson, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) commanded by Petraeus, was quoted in a USA Today story published
on Tuesday as saying that there had been a "dip" in deaths and injuries from
IEDs over the previous 12 weeks compared to the same period in 2009.
But the JIEDDO figures on deaths and injuries to US and NATO forces from IEDs
from June through August 2010 total 271 casualties - a 30% increase over the
total for those months a year ago.
In response to a query from Inter Press Service (IPS), however, Johnson said he
was including deaths and injuries to Afghan security personnel and civilians as
well.
Killing and wounding foreign troops is generally understood to be the objective
of the Taliban's IED war and the reduction of those casualties is the objective
of Petraeus' command.
Petraeus had previously been more cautious about claiming success in the IED
war. In an interview with Spencer Ackerman of the website Danger Room on August
18, Petraeus only referred to growing pressures on the Taliban organizing for
IEDs from both US intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems and
from SOF units.
But when Ackerman pointed out that IED attacks were rising, Petraeus asserted
that the increase could be because US and coalition forces are "on the
offensive taking away areas that matter to the enemy, safe havens and
sanctuaries".
Challenged by Ackerman on an interpretation that turned an obvious indicator of
a failing war effort into an indicator of progress, however, Petraeus
retreated, saying, "That's fair enough."
Both the Ackerman interview and Johnson's statement illustrate the Petraeus
tactic of making statements that mislead by omission or tendentious
interpretation rather than making statements that could be proven false.
The Petraeus statement to the Journal about "flattened" IED figures, however,
appears to go beyond that tactic.
The JIEDDO data on IED incidents by month also provide evidence that the US and
NATO forces had failed to win the trust of the population in the Pashtun
provinces where the Taliban have been strongest. The JIEDDO figures show that
the proportion of IEDs turned in by the population has continued to fall with
each passing year since the NATO military buildup in Pashtun areas began in
2006.
In late 2005, the civilian population was informing US and NATO troops of about
15% of all IEDs planted. That proportion fell to just over nine percent in
2006, to less than 7% in 2007 to about three percent in 2008, and again to 2.8%
in 2009.
In the first six months of 2010, that ratio dropped to 2.6%, and in May and
June it fell to 1.4% and 1%, respectively.
A paper by four authors, including former Petraeus adviser David Kilcullen,
published by the pro-war Center for New American Security in June 2009
highlighted the importance of the proportion of IEDs turned in by the
population as an indicator of good relations between US and NATO military units
and the local population.
A rise in the proportion of IEDs found and cleared, especially because of tips
from the population, would be a "sign of progress", the authors concluded.
The head of JIEDDO, Lieutenant General Michael Oates, appears to agree with
that analysis. In an interview with USA Today published last March, Oates said
winning the trust of the Afghan population is "a key ingredient" in protecting
US troops from IEDs.
The steep decline in the proportion of IEDs turned in by the population as more
US and NATO troops intruded on the Pashtun countryside is another reliable
indicator - supporting opinion surveys in Helmand and Kandahar provinces - of
the deterioration of relations between foreign troops and the population.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing
in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was
published in 2006.
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