The Torch: Afstan: The Marja offensive in Helmand (and Kandahar)--looking at that glass

It all depends...

1) Too few Afghans ready to take over in Taliban strongholds, Senate panel is told

Not nearly enough trained Afghans are available to take control of key Taliban strongholds such as Marja after the military has pushed out the enemy, U.S. officials told a Senate panel Thursday.

"The number of those civilians . . . who are trained, capable, willing to go into [Taliban-controlled areas] does not match at all demand," David Sedney, a deputy assistant secretary of defense, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The assessment didn't sit well with lawmakers...

A week into the battle, Marja's civilian chief was brought in to raise the Afghan flag [more here], and Marja residents who had fled began to return. Since then, progress has been slower than U.S. officials had planned. NATO forces still run much of the area.

2) U.S. calls Marja offensive a success

But concerns remain about shoring up local government throughout Afghanistan, officials say. The Marja campaign offers lessons for the upcoming U.S. offensive in Kandahar.

The U.S.-Afghan military operation in Marja succeeded in securing the town, but American officials said Thursday that steep challenges remain to improving local government functions throughout Afghanistan.

Senior U.S. diplomats and military officers said developing stronger governments would require a greater number of capable Afghan officials.

The assessment of the Marja operation, which began in February, came as Afghan President Hamid Karzai prepared to travel to Washington next week. Karzai has recently sounded more equivocal in his position on U.S. operations, including an expected offensive in Kandahar [more here and here]...

Lawmakers, military officers and other officials are looking closely at the Marja campaign and its aftermath for lessons that can be applied to the upcoming offensive in Kandahar.

As they did in Marja, U.S. officials will try to build up and improve local government in Kandahar concurrently with military operations in the city, pushing out some corrupt officials and replacing them with technocrats [more here from a Canadian view]...

Meanwhile this seems rather apposite:

The other day I [Tom Ricks] was looking back at Bernard Fall's terrific speech on counterinsurgency to the Naval War College, delivered I think in 1964, and the following quote struck me. This comes right after a section in which he has asserted that tracking which side is collecting more taxes, the government or the insurgents, is a good way to understand which is winning. The italics are his.

I have emphasized that the straight military aspects, or the conventional military aspects of insurgency, are not the most important. Tax collections have nothing to do with helicopters... I would like to put it in an even simpler way: When a country is being subverted, it is not being outfought; it is being outadministered... [W]e can win the war and lose the country.

In 100 words or less: How would you apply that thought to Afghanistan today?

On Afstan overall: