Push into Helmand triggered severe spike in civilian death rate, failed its objectives

ISAF commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal set out a clear marker for what he considers "success" in Afghanistan:

American success in Afghanistan should be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” not the number of enemy fighters killed, he said.

Unfortunately, according to updated totals from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan, Operation Khanjar, launched on July 2, was followed by a severe spike in civilian casualties. The vast majority of these casualties were caused by IEDs and suicide bombings attributed to anti-Kabul-government elements. But, with the spike coinciding so closely with the launch of the ISAF push into Helmand, it’s clear that NATO choices continue to feed into a dynamic that has become toxic for civilians.

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NATO forces might take comfort in the fact that they tamped down the number of civilian deaths attributed to them compared to the elevated levels of recent months. But McChrystal (rightly, I might add) put forward a measure of success as the total number of Afghans protected from violence, not just the number killed by U.S. and NATO troops. Measured by that criteria, Operation Khanjar was a blunder that triggered a wave of civilian deaths caused by insurgent push-back.

This should not have been a surprise to campaign planners. We’ve known since forever that the Taliban would employ indiscriminate means against us when put under pressure. From the most recent report of the UN Secretary General, "The situation in Afghanistan and its implications for international peace and security":

The tactics adopted by the insurgency since its resurgence in 2005 have remained unchanged in their essence. These are an avoidance of force-to-force encounters, a reliance on asymmetric tactics, deliberate targeting of representatives of State institutions and international organizations and a disregard for human lives.

From the September 2008 version of the same report:

The majority of civilian casualties attributed to anti-Government elements are the result of suicide and improvised explosive device attacks…which are often carried out in crowded civilian areas.

Etc. etc. etc.

So again, Taliban and other insurgents are directly responsible for the consequences of their actions, but it’s not like we can hold up our clean(ish) hands and say, "Hey now, don’t blame us, we didn’t do it." We had (or should have had) a pretty clear idea how the insurgents would respond, and our decision to go ahead with that in mind gives us a bit of culpability as well for putting these civilian deaths in the category of "acceptable risks." I’m sure NATO/ISAF gets this point as well, which is why you haven’t really heard a lot of crowing about the fact that the anti-Kabul-government elements were directly responsible for more than ten times the number of civilian deaths than ISAF in August; they know that’s not the point. The rationale of our presence in Afghanistan has never been "we’ll kill fewer of you than the other guys." Rather, the rationale has been that the presence of ISAF increases security for ordinary Afghans, and that by doing so, it wins legitimacy for the government which ISAF supports.

Some might object that the spike in civilian deaths could be attributed to election-related violence. This is true in only the broadest of senses. Khanjar was intended to secure the population to allow their participation in the upcoming election, which, it was hoped, would help legitimize the national government in the eyes of the Pashtun population. But the casualty data and analysis from the UN make it clear that the violence classified as directly "election-related" occurred in the week prior to and during election day, and by the time they’d published their most recent report they could only attribute roughly 45 or so of the civilian deaths in August to election-related violence. Even if you subtract those numbers from the August total, it’s still a marked increase from the June total. The markedly heightened level of civilian-killing violence, on the other hand, remains constant from July – August–with Khanjar having been launched on July 2nd.

And, the overall rationale for the operation–to secure voter turnout for a legitimizing election–fell flat on its face. In Helmand, turnout was dismal, and the election was an illegitimate sham. In fact, UNAMA’s most recent report warns that the election may be a trigger for more, not less, violence. Peter Gailbraith, the recently dismissed U.N. official in Afghanistan, was apparently forced out over his objections to what he saw as the UN whitewash of an election whose fraudulent ballots may have totaled 30 percent of the votes tallied.

Operation Khanjar echoes the surge in Iraq: it’s backers can point to certain statistics, but when we measure its success by the larger strategic measures given as justification, there’s no way to call it success. Something to keep in mind as we debate whether to send more troops into more insurgency-prone areas.

More troops are not the answer in Afghanistan. We need to lower the overall level of military conflict as quickly as possible, and the only way to do that is to sharply reduce the number of U.S. troops in theater while assisting national political reconciliation and humanitarian efforts. Due to the consequences of past choices, we may not be able to find "success" along this route either, but at least it has the relative benefit of not having a history draped in failure.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. Learn how the war in Afghanistan undermines U.S. security: watch Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six), & visit http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.