By Sara A. Carter
The Washington Examiner
President Hamid Karzai’s call to eliminate U.S. Special Forces night missions in Afghanistan will give the Taliban an advantage on the battlefield and place American soldiers and civilians at risk, military and intelligence officials say.
NATO commanders have been touting the success of military operations that have led to the killing of more than 339 Taliban midlevel commanders and roughly 950 fighters in a three-month period — many killed in the kinds of missions Karzai wants to stop.
“All Special Operations missions take place at night,” said retired Army Reserve Maj. Gen. Timothy Haake, who served with the U.S. Special Forces. “For Karzai to say that, he’s in effect saying no more night missions, and no more special operations.”
Haake, who is familiar with ongoing operations in Afghanistan, said “Karzai is trying to establish credibility with the Taliban, so he can cut the best deal because he believes the U.S. will leave. That is why the Taliban has been successful in pressuring him.”
A U.S. military official in Kabul with direct knowledge of Special Forces operations said night missions are a critical part of defeating the Taliban, as well as a way of reducing civilian casualties.
“Night missions are important because they are one of the most effective means of removing some of the most dangerous insurgents from the battlefield,” the official stated. “All Special Forces Operations are fully vetted with our Afghan partners.”
If Karzai’s request to stop night missions is granted, insurgents will believe “they have sanctuary at night. They are more likely to increase their ability to harass and intimidate the civilian population,” the official said.
Gen. David H. Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said the 30,000-troop surge approved by the Obama administration made a difference in NATO’s ability to hold back the insurgency. But he added that it is too early to take the pressure off the Taliban by cutting back on night missions.
Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who headed the Obama administration’s Afghanistan-Pakistan review last year, said that it’s too soon to tell if NATO’s strategy on the ground can stop the Taliban’s momentum.
“Petraeus has focused on two areas: building up the Afghanistan forces and weakening the Taliban local and regional leadership,” said Mr. Riedel, who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The biggest unknown is the Taliban’s capacity to regenerate lost cadre and leaders. We won’t know the answer to that until the next fighting season in 2011. Then, and not before, will we be able to really judge whether the strategy is working.”
Haake said the Taliban is feeling the pressure now. “The Obama administration has taken the gloves off, killing a fair amount of Taliban during the night missions with very little collateral damage,” he said.
Karzai told the Washington Post on Saturday that not only should the U.S. stop night missions, “the time has come to reduce military operations. The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan … to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life.”
James Carafano, senior defense analyst for the Heritage Foundation, said that “Karzai is positioning himself, flexing his muscle.” He predicted that the Afghan leader “will not get his way on this.”
“In a way, this is the administration’s fault for putting the politics of Washington ahead of the politics of Kabul,” Carafano said.
NATO is expected to follow the U.S. lead on Afghanistan, where a draw-down date of 2014 is going to be discussed.
An Afghan official said that Karzai “is worried and the Taliban has been pressuring him to use his muscle against the U.S.”
“The Taliban wants to stop the U.S. operations at night because they are getting hit hard, so Karzai is playing all sides,” the Afghan official said. “It’s a dangerous game.”
U.S. military officials and troops say they feel like pawns in a game without clearly drawn sides.
“The mission is convoluted,” said an official in Afghanistan. “On the one hand you have Karzai running off with money from U.S. taxpayers and then working it so that we can’t defeat the enemy. What worries me is you have our commanders implementing strict rules of engagement on Karzai’s behalf that end up either killing us or keeping us from doing our job.”
Sara A. Carter is The Washington Examiner’s national security correspondent. She can be reached at [email protected].
