By Patrick Appel
Ahmed Rashid recently sat down with Scott Horton to talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan:
The United States never deemed it necessary to provide enough ground troops in the first place, so it became necessary to use excessive air power to avoid U.S. casualties—the force Rumsfeld had committed was far too small to secure Afghanistan after 2001, much less to deal with the Taliban insurgency after 2003. Rumsfeld refused to deploy more troops because of the need for more troops in Iraq. Even when NATO forces came in the use of air power only became more excessive because many of the NATO countries imposed caveats which either prevented their troops from actually fighting or demanded close air support from the Americans for every patrol.
I find it amazing that the Afghans, with their enormous capacity to undergo suffering and death after 30 years of almost continuous war, did not actually rebel much earlier against their own government and the Americans. Even in the early years after 2001, when there was not much of an insurgency, the level of civilian casualties was very high.
In recent months U.S. and NATO forces have become much more careful about civilian casualties and I don’t think Rumsfeld’s order still stands. The other determining factor has been that since the insurgency began the Taliban have become very adept at exploiting and exaggerating civilian casualties, which they often cause themselves by using civilians as shields–especially when they know that bombing is going to take place. Moreover, the Taliban propaganda machine has become fast and effective, and that has forced Western forces to change their policies.
The Dish 