U.S. intelligence: Taliban going strong

On Wednesday the Washington Post ran a story saying that the U.S. intelligence community is agreed that the Taliban is maintaining its strength in Afghanistan. The report said the intensified military campaign against the Taliban has failed to inflict anything more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency and that the Taliban are maintaining their resilience and ability to reestablish and rejuvenate themselves.

U.S. military and intelligence officials, citing the latest assessments of the war, said that Taliban insurgents have been adept at absorbing the escalated airstrikes and raids, and they appear confident they can outlast the American troop buildup, which is scheduled to diminish next July. A senior Defense Department official involved in assessments of the war said that if there is a sign that momentum has shifted, “I don’t see it.”

These reports from U.S. spy agencies contradict what Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has been saying ahead of the Obama administration’s strategic review of the war scheduled for December. General Petraeus has touted the success of recent operations and said that progress is occurring “more rapidly than was anticipated.”

The intelligence agencies, however, have found that Taliban commanders who have been killed or captured are replaced within a matter of days. Indeed, the Taliban appear to be drawing strength from the knowledge that President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing troops in the middle of next year, with operatives telling each other “The end is near,” according to officials. While the surge of U.S. forces into southern and southwestern Afghanistan has resulted in the Taliban falling back in these areas, this is likely a strategic withdrawal rather than a defeat. The Taliban have a history of resting before regrouping and going on the offensive once again.

Stratfor sums up the situation thus (October 28):

[T]he one thing that is fairly clear is that the Taliban do not face strategic defeat. The U.S.-led strategy is intended to attempt to deny them some key areas while pressuring them toward political accommodation; the American military objective is increasingly becoming a negotiated settlement. The example of Vietnam should give pause here. As U.S. Col. Harry Summers so clearly articulated, negotiation is achieved militarily when military power is applied in such a way as to impose upon the enemy a choice: negotiate on American terms and on American timetables, or be destroyed. Negotiation with the Taliban must be understood first and foremost as lacking that latter possibility.

This is one more war that the U.S. will not win.