“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
U.N. Maps Show Risks in Many Districts Have Increased Despite Troop Surge
By YAROSLAV TROFIMOV DECEMBER 27, 2010
Internal United Nations maps show a marked deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan during this year's fighting season, countering the Obama administration's optimistic assessments of military progress since the surge of additional American forces began a year ago.
The Wall Street Journal was able to view two confidential "residual risk accessibility" maps, one compiled by the U.N. at the annual fighting season's start in March 2010 and another at its tail end in October. The maps, used by U.N. personnel to gauge the dangers of travel and running programs, divide the country's districts into four categories: very high risk, high risk, medium risk and low risk.
In the October map, just as in March's, nearly all of southern Afghanistan—the focus of the coalition's military offensives—remained painted the red of "very high risk," with no noted improvements. At the same time, the green belt of "low risk" districts in northern, central and western Afghanistan shriveled.
The U.N.'s October map upgraded to "high risk" 16 previously more secure districts in Badghis, Sar-e-Pul, Balkh, Parwan, Baghlan, Samangan, Faryab, Laghman and Takhar provinces; only two previously "high risk" districts, one in Kunduz and one in Herat province, received a safer rating.
A Pentagon report mandated by Congress drew similar conclusions when it was released last month. It said attacks were up 70% since 2009 and threefold since 2007. As a result of the violence, the Taliban still threaten the Afghan government, according to the report. The White House's National Security Council declined to comment.
The director of communications for the U.N. in Afghanistan, Kieran Dwyer, said he couldn't comment on classified maps. But, he said, "in the course of 2010, the security situation in many parts of the country has become unstable where it previously had not been so. There is violence happening in more parts of the country, and this is making the delivery of humanitarian services more difficult for the U.N. and other organizations. But we are continuing to deliver."
U.S.-led coalition forces operate in Afghanistan under a U.N. Security Council mandate, and the U.N. works hand-in-hand with the coalition on building up Afghan government institutions. The Taliban have repeatedly attacked U.N. buildings and personnel, labeling the U.N. an instrument of American imperialism.
A senior coalition official, asked if security in Afghanistan has deteriorated this year, said that coalition forces "have taken the offensive and are making deliberate and steady progress, though progress right now is still fragile and reversible."
He highlighted advances in Kandahar, Helmand and around Kabul, and said that a new program to raise local police forces "will reduce the insurgents' ability to intimidate the population" in areas where regular troop density isn't sufficient to maintain security.
The assessments of the U.N. accessibility maps, based on factors such as insurgent activity, political stability, coalition operations and community acceptance, contrast with President Barack Obama's recent statements that hail the coalition's progress in the war.
"Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future," Mr. Obama told American troops during a visit to the Bagram Air Field northeast of Kabul earlier this month.
Most of the 30,000 U.S. surge troops deployed this year were sent to the Taliban heartland in the southern Kandahar and Helmand provinces, where they have been able to capture key insurgent strongholds. Though no longer under uncontested Taliban control, most of these areas remain a war zone, with frequent shootings and bombings.
As the coalition focused on the south, the insurgents fanned out during the year to the north and the west. In recent months, the Taliban seized control in areas of dozens of districts in those previously secure parts of the country, taking advantage of the sparse international troop presence there.
Many nongovernment organizations operating in Afghanistan dispute that any progress has been made by the coalition this year. According to preliminary statistics compiled by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which provides advice and coordination to NGOs working in the country, the number of insurgent-initiated attacks rose 66% in 2010 from the previous year.
"The country as a whole is dramatically worse off than a year ago, both in terms of the insurgency's geographical spread and its rate of attacks," said Nic Lee, director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office. "Vast amounts of the country remain insecure for the unarmed civilians, and more and more areas are becoming inaccessible."
KABUL, Afghanistan — Citing evidence that Taliban insurgents have expanded their reach across Afghanistan, aid groups and security analysts in the country are challenging as misleading the Obama administration's recent claim that insurgents now control less territory than they did a year ago.
"Absolutely, without any reservation, it is our opinion that the situation is a lot more insecure this year than it was last year," said Nic Lee, the director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, an independent organization that analyzes security dangers for aid groups.
"We don't see COIN has had any impact on the five-year trajectory," he said, referring to the counterinsurgency strategy that U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, has championed.
While U.S.-led forces have driven insurgents out of their strongholds in southern Afghanistan, Taliban advances in the rest of the country may have offset those gains, a cross section of year-end estimates suggests.
Insurgent attacks have jumped at least 66 percent this year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.
Security analysts say that Taliban shadow governors still exert control in all but one of Afghanistan's 34 provinces.
A recent United Nations security estimate of the risks that U.N. personnel face as they travel around Afghanistan concluded that security was deteriorating in growing pockets across the country.
In one example, the U.N.'s World Food Program no longer sends its trucks along the road that links Kabul to Bamiyan, one of the country's safest regions, because a bomb killed a U.N. contract driver and three police escorts on the route in July.
"Our ability to use these routes has decreased," said Challiss McDonough, a Kabul-based spokeswoman for the international food program. "There are fewer places where we have completely unimpeded access."
A 20 percent increase in civilian casualties in 2010 and the highest coalition death toll in nine years of war add to the belief in Afghanistan that insecurity is growing, not declining.
"I can't understand how they can say it is more secure than last year," said Hashim Mayar, the acting director of the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an umbrella group that represents more than 100 Afghan and international aid groups working in Afghanistan. "Insecurity has extended to some parts of the county that were relatively safe last year."
President Barack Obama offered the assessment of diminished Taliban control on Dec. 3 during a surprise visit to the country.
"Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future," said Obama told U.S. troops at Bagram Airfield.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates repeated the claim two weeks later in discussing the findings of a 40-page still-secret assessment of U.S. progress in Afghanistan that was announced Dec. 16.
"As a result of the tough fight under way, the Taliban control far less territory today than they did a year ago," Gates said.
The five-page unclassified version of that assessment doesn't include the statement about territorial control, but it leaves the impression that the Taliban are on the run.
"The surge in coalition military and civilian resources . . . has reduced overall Taliban influence and arrested the momentum they had achieved in recent years in key parts of the country," the unclassified version says.
In the days since its release, the White House and U.S. officials in Kabul have declined to provide specifics, saying only that the conclusion was based on a variety of measures that include the number of districts under Taliban or government control, estimates of Taliban freedom of movement and information about roadside bombs.
"There's just not a lot more we can offer without getting into classified information," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday in an e-mail message.
Last month, the Pentagon concluded that Afghan insurgents' "capabilities and operational reach have been qualitatively and geographically expanding."
Asked whether that assessment conflicts with the White House assertion that the Taliban control less territory, a military spokesman said that both could be true.
"You can, in fact, lose ground but be more geographically dispersed," said U.S. Rear Adm. Greg Smith, the communications director for the American-led military in Afghanistan.
Smith produced military maps that showed expanding "ink spots" of security around Afghanistan's biggest population centers, including Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and Kandahar, the Taliban's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan.
Smith argued that by focusing on protecting the country's largest population centers under the administration's counterinsurgency strategy, the U.S.-led military has contained much of the violence and is protecting a growing percentage of the country's 28 million residents, even if the Taliban are operating more widely.
In the past year, Smith said, the U.S. military has managed to reduce the number of Afghan districts that account for half of the violence from 14 to nine.
"They will expend a force to go somewhere thinking that we will follow them out of the main . . . population centers," Smith said. "Well, they're mistaken. We're not going to get sucked into chasing them around the country."
Even so, Smith said the military couldn't vouch for the White House assertion that the Taliban control less territory, which he said was based on a CIA study, not a military one.
"It's not a metric that we're able to validate from an ISAF perspective," he said, referring to the International Security Assistance Force, the official name of the coalition. "Not that I disagree with it, but the agency that does that is a three-letter agency."
A former senior U.S. intelligence official who closely tracks the conflict in Afghanistan said that his own count, based on news reports, showed insurgency-related violence in at least 231 out of the country's 400 districts in November.
The former official, who agreed to discuss his findings only if he weren't identified, because of the sensitivity of the topic, said the count showed the Taliban's reach expanding.
"Even in unclassified sources, it's clear that the Taliban are showing they have greater reach than ever before," he said. "I don't know if they have the staying power." But they can reach previously unaffected areas, he said, "and that means terror. That means they can punish anybody anywhere."
"There were a lot more districts in contention than there were a year ago," he said.
Recent U.N. security estimates that The Wall Street Journal obtained appeared to support that view.
The maps, which assess the safety risks for U.N. staff traveling around Afghanistan, showed security deteriorating in growing pockets across the country.
Problems from March to October of this year worsened in eight provinces and overall travel risks improved in only two, the Journal reported.
(Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this report from Washington.)
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