Afghanistan: SNAFU

Britain's former ambassador to Afghanistan has attacked the conduct of the war by the US commander, General David Petraeus, describing the future CIA chief's tactics as counter-productive and "profoundly wrong".

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, who also served as the UK's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, added that Petraeus should be "ashamed of himself" for making claims of the number of insurgent commanders his forces had killed.

[...]

"There is no doubt that Petraeus has hammered the Taliban extremely hard," he said. "I am sure that some of them are more willing to parlay. But, equally, for every dead Pashtun warrior, there will be 10 pledged to revenge.

"Of course it produces tactical success in cleansing insurgents out of particular areas, but it's essentially moving water around a puddle, and I think any general who boasts of the number of Pashtun insurgents he's killed should be ashamed of himself."

[...]

”He has increased the violence, trebled the number of special forces raids by British, American, Dutch and Australian special forces going out killing Taliban commanders, and there has been a lot more rather regrettable boasting from the military about the body count," said Cowper-Coles. He added that the use of statistics was reminiscent of the Vietnam war. "It is profoundly wrong and it's not conducive to a stable political settlement."

  UK Guardian

Yeah, Sir Shep hasn’t been read in to the plot, has he?

Cowper-Coles focused his efforts while UK special envoy on persuading the Obama administration to concentrate on a political settlement and start talking to the Taliban.

Some reports suggest that Washington has initiated such contacts. But British officials say that Marc Grossman, the US special envoy on Afghanistan and Pakistan leading the outreach effort, is having trouble finding any credible Taliban representatives to engage in even talks about talks.

Situation Normal….

"Why would they negotiate?" asked Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit and an expert on the Taliban. "They are winning…”

[...]

But Scheuer, the author of a new book on Bin Laden, said that Petraeus's "decapitation" approach was also unlikely to work."The Red Army tried that for 10 years, and they were far more ruthless and cruel about it than us, and it didn't work so well for them," Scheuer said.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.