The Afghan Surge Was A Dismal Failure And These NATO Charts Prove It
AP
The Afghan surge was based on false premises—namely that the Iraq surge was a unqualified success—and its U.S. troops on the ground who paid for that mistake with their lives, limbs and mental health.
New charts, released by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and first published by Wired, acknowledge this fact with hard data.
The strategy of the Afghan surge was to CLEAR out the Taliban, HOLD all ground seized, BUILD infrastructure and governance, and TRANSFER control to Afghan forces while "winning the hearts and minds" of the Afghan population.
The failure of the counter-insurgency is clear when one compares "Enemy-Initiated Attacks" and "Executed IED Attacks" from the beginning of the surge in mid-2009 to the drawdown in mid-2012.
It hasn't gotten better, and bold attacks like the one on Camp Bastion and the killing of Americans by the Afghans they're training indicate that things have gotten worse.
As Lt. Col. Davis noted, U.S. casualties increased with each successive increase of troops since violence began to rise in 2005—reaching a peak in the middle of the surge (October 2011)—and only began to drop once 10,000 troops were withdrawn by the end of December 2011.
Essentially the U.S. has been deploying troops into a meat grinder.
SEE ALSO: The First Major 'Surge' Operation Shows Why The US Is Failing In Afghanistan >
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