[R-G] U.S. report warns of crisis in Afghanistan

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S. report warns of crisis in Afghanistan
By Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt
Thursday, October 9, 2008
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=16813892

WASHINGTON: A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes  
that Afghanistan is in a "downward spiral" and casts serious doubt on  
the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban's  
influence there, according to American officials familiar with the  
document.

The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in  
Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the  
government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence  
from militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks  
from havens in Pakistan.

The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence  
Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will  
be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the  
situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on  
decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after  
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States made Afghanistan the  
central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.

Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring  
Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan's  
most vexing problems are of the country's own making, the officials  
said.

The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan's national army,  
the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms what  
it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin trade,  
which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan's  
economy.

The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its  
Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the  
country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan  
has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with  
questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on  
the war in Iraq has been misplaced.

Inside the government, reports issued by the Central Intelligence  
Agency for more than two years have chronicled the worsening violence  
and rampant corruption inside Afghanistan, and some in the agency say  
they believe that it has taken the White House too long to respond to  
the warnings.

Henry Crumpton, a career CIA officer who last year stepped down as the  
State Department's top counterterrorism official, attributed some of  
Afghanistan's problems to a "lack of leadership" both at the White  
House and in European capitals where commitments to rebuild  
Afghanistan after 2001 have never been met.

Crumpton, who was in charge of the CIA teams that entered Afghanistan  
after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but who said he had not seen the  
draft report, said that Afghanistan was "bad and getting worse" and  
that officials in Washington were just beginning to wake up to the  
problem.

"It's taken them a long time to realize it, but now they know it's  
pretty grim," he said.

A National Intelligence Estimate is a formal document that reflects  
the consensus judgments of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Although  
the Bush administration has made public the crucial findings from some  
recent intelligence estimates on Iraq and terrorism, most remain  
classified. The assessment on Afghanistan is the first since the  
Taliban regained strength there beginning in 2006 and launched an  
offensive that has allowed them to seize large swaths of territory.

The draft intelligence report was described by more than a half dozen  
current government officials who have read its conclusions. They spoke  
on the condition of anonymity because the report remains classified  
and has not yet been completed.

Richard Willing, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of  
National Intelligence, which produces the national intelligence  
assessments, declined to comment for this article. A White House  
spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, also declined to comment on the report's  
conclusions but said: "Everyone understands that the current situation  
in Afghanistan is a tough one. That's why the president ordered  
additional troops there. That's why we're increasing the size of the  
Afghanistan Army."

Both major presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John  
McCain, have called for U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan even  
beyond those the White House has ordered. Obama has accused the White  
House of paying too little attention to Afghanistan as it poured the  
vast bulk of American resources into the war in Iraq, while McCain has  
defended the administration's decision, saying that Iraq remains the  
more important front in the battle against terrorism.

In the presidential debate on Tuesday, Obama said he told Karzai  
during a visit to Afghanistan in July that the Afghan leader had "to  
do better by your people in order for us to gain the popular support  
that's necessary."

"We have to have a government that is responsive to the Afghan  
people," Obama said, "and frankly it's just not responsive right now."

American officials said that intelligence agencies were also working  
to produce an assessment on Pakistan, and that both were to be  
completed after the elections next month. They said the draft findings  
had already begun to influence the recommendations of the White House- 
led review of Afghanistan policy, which was scheduled to be completed  
this month but has now been postponed several weeks.

The administration is considering whether the United States should  
devote more effort to working directly with tribal leaders in far- 
flung provinces, and possibly arming tribal militias, to fight the  
Taliban in places where Afghanistan's army and police forces have been  
ineffective.

The Bush administration had long resisted making tribal elders a  
centerpiece of American strategy in Afghani- stan. American officials  
had hoped instead that strong national institutions like the Afghan  
Army could protect the Afghan population, but the escalating violence  
this year has forced a reassessment of the value of the tribal system  
for counterinsurgency operations.

"In order to have an effective counterinsurgency strategy, you need to  
have strong local governance in the districts and the provinces," said  
a senior State Department official who has been briefed on the  
report's broad conclusions, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a sign of the seriousness of the administration's policy review,  
the White House's top coordinator for Afghanistan policy, Lieutenant  
General Douglas Lute of the army, will lead a delegation of  
specialists who will travel there to assess the current situation, a  
senior administration official said Wednesday.

Administration officials say the review is examining how and where the  
nearly $6 billion in annual American assistance to Afghanistan is  
being spent; how to improve the effectiveness of small teams of  
American and European civilians and troops seeded throughout the  
Afghan provinces to spur economic growth; and how to strike the right  
balance between taking military action against the Taliban and Al  
Qaeda in Pakistan and providing more development aid to that country.  
Senior American commanders have recently been blunt in their  
assessment of the security trends in the country. "In large parts of  
Afghanistan, we don't see progress," General David McKiernan, the top  
American officer in Afghanistan, told reporters last week. "We're into  
a very tough counterinsurgency fight and will be for some time."

It is not just American officials who offer a grim prognosis. A French  
diplomatic cable leaked to a French newspaper last week quoted the  
British ambassador to Afghanistan as forecasting that the NATO-led  
mission there would fail.

"The current situation is bad, the security situation is getting  
worse, so is corruption, and the government has lost all trust," the  
British envoy, Sherard Cowper-Coles, was quoted as telling the French  
deputy ambassador to Kabul, who wrote the cable.