Afghanistan: US has deadliest month as new strategy is developed

July has been the deadliest month to date for U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan.

Today's Washington Post reports on a new U.S. strategy for the war that Bush started, but never even tried to finish:

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is preparing a new strategy that calls for major changes in the way U.S. and other NATO troops there operate, a vast increase in the size of Afghan security forces and an intensified military effort to root out corruption among local government officials, according to several people familiar with the contents of an assessment report that outlines his approach to the war.

One of our readers, who served in the U.S. Army, was based in Afghanistan. Over the past few years, he's provided some perspective on how things are going and where they may be headed. I asked him for thoughts on the latest developments:

I left Afghanistan almost five years ago (five years ago next week, actually), and at the time I thought that the country was improving marginally, at least what I could see of it. I don't feel that way anymore.

While I do think that the administration genuinely is making a good-faith effort to do the right thing, I have a bad feeling that we're drifting into something awful.

The problem, I think, is that this has always really been about Pakistan, and while the Obama team clearly gets that (AfPak designation, etc), I'm not sure that being aware of it is enough.

When I was in-country (I was stationed in the Pashtun east), I learned a little bit of Pashto, and I would ask the locals playfully, "Bin Laden cherta die? Mullah Omar cherta die?" (Where is Bin Laden? Where is Mullah Omar?) Without hestitation, and generally without smiling, they would point east and say, "pe Pakistan ke ye" -- in Pakistan. Or sometimes "pe Quetta ke ye" even. There was no doubt in any of the Afghans whom I ever met - soldiers, translators, civilians - that the real enemy - "duchman" - came in from Pakistan.

There's more after the break. Very insightful.

Here's the rest:

So what does that mean for the mission? It means that until we can find a way to seal the border more effectively - until we can find away to deny the enemy a base to rest and refit - we're running the risk of just putting off a final day of reckoning. Even if we can restore some semblance of stability to Helmand, for example, if we can't stop the flow of bad guys coming across the mountains, they can replenish themselves endlessly, and can always wait us out. There's two ways that I can think of to stop the flow:

1) We can try to seal the border from the Afghanistan side by putting a lot more troops on the border. This seems nice, and it's something that we can "do" proactively, but I think it throws a lot of bodies into an impossible task. The border is insane - all mountains and caves that we can never know as well as the natives, and that we can never truly patrol 100% of the time. Imagine the Mexican-U.S. border on acid.

2) Pakistan can seal the border from its side. Here, I am way out of my depth. Can they? Do they want to? Can it happen without a settlement with India over Kashmir? Can we help facilitate a settlement? Would even trying to facilitate buy us enough credibility with the ISI or Army for them to want to do this? Are the ISI and the army so fatally compromised by the Taliban that the whole effort is pointless? Is the Pakistani army's current expedition against the Taliban a positive sign, a negative one, or do we not know yet?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions, but I don't have a great feeling about what the answers might be.

Anyway, I've been wrong before about Afghanistan, and hopefully I'll be wrong again. Maybe it is possible that if we can create enough stability throughout Afghanistan itself, then the country will have a chance to stand up its own institutions and protect itself and its own border. It seems like that's our game plan, so let's hope.