Behind the U.S. military success claims in Afghanistan

Isabel Hilton, Guardian News Service, London

So you think you know what's happening in Afghanistan? Try this: Operation Anaconda -- the 11-day battle for the Shah-i-Kot valley, was described by General Tommy Franks as an "unqualified and absolute success". But the only thing we know for certain was that eight U.S. soldiers died and 50 were wounded. The rest is concealed less by the fog of war than the smokescreen of U.S. military secrecy.

When Anaconda began in early March, it was described as an operation to mop up one of the last pockets of resistance of al- Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Estimates of the enemy strength were 200, rising to 1,000 two days later. Over the next 11 days, French and U.S. warplanes dropped 3,250 bombs. Then Afghan troops went in to take the caves. They met no resistance. Victory was declared.

The Pentagon's classified estimate first listed the enemy dead at 517 with another 250 unconfirmed. Two days later, U.S. sources claimed a total of more than 800. Only 10 Taliban had been seen moving after the battle ended, according to officers on the ground.

Another 52 sorties were flown and another 164 bombs dropped. Seven hundred U.S. and Canadian troops then joined the search of the area. They found fewer than 20 bodies -- and fewer than 20 caves. (U.S. claims of numerous well-appointed caves were dismissed by their Afghan commander and ally, Gen. Haider, as "propaganda".) Some 20 prisoners were taken, many of them, according to Haider, "simple farmers".

None of this adds up. If there were 1,000 fighters to begin with, 20 bodies have been found and 10 survivors spotted, what happened to the other 970? U.S. officers suggested they may have been pulverized: More than three bombs were dropped per enemy fighter and some 165 for every corpse discovered, so perhaps it's surprising there was anything left of Shah-i-Kot at all. (Three villages in the valley were also reduced to dust. The casualties were unrecorded.)

They also argue that, being devout Muslims, the survivors would have buried the dead. That requires us to imagine 10 known survivors burying 970 fallen comrades. The numbers, though, as the Pentagon official admitted in a masterpiece of understatement, are a little fuzzy.

Writing on guerrilla war, a subject he knew well, Mao Zedong, observed that "when the enemy advances, we retreat". The guerrilla moves among the people like a fish in water. The most likely explanation for Operation Anaconda's crazy numbers is that the Taliban fish of Shah-i-Kot have simply swum away.

One difficulty of fighting such a war in a country that's not your own is the ability to tell one fish from another. In your eagerness to kill the enemy, you are tempted to drain the pond. Soon you are seen as a foreign invader and the oppressor of all native fish, however lofty your reason for being there. British and U.S. forces have good reason to know this, but there is little they can do to change it.

We will probably never know the truth about Operation Anaconda, as we have not known the truth about 90 percent of the fighting in Afghanistan. The war that 1,700 British troops are about to join is one of the least reported of modern times. We have absolutely no access to the enemy side.

More worryingly, we do not have access to our own. U.S. commanders routinely bar correspondents from the areas where the fighting is taking place and discourages contact with the Afghan commanders. We do not know how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan. We do not know how many have been detained or what has become of them. We do not know the casualty figures from mistakes in U.S. targeting.

Even less reported is the naval operation under way in the northern Arabian sea where the largest naval force since the second world war -- more than 100 warships from a dozen countries -- has been tracking hundreds of vessels a day, searching many in the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban. As far as we know, they have found nothing.

What we do know, though, is that warlordism and banditry have returned to Afghanistan and that the al-Qaeda/Taliban resistance survives with the support of many alienated Pashtun in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Pashtun make up 40 percent of Afghanistan's population and are profoundly suspicious of the Tajik-dominated interim government in Kabul.

Their hopes of recovering what they see as their historic right to rule Afghanistan are pinned on the loya jirga, due to be held in June under the direction of the aged, exiled king. The prospects for that event are, to say the least, uncertain.

Reports suggest, indeed, that Northern Alliance warlords are keen to prevent it. British troops, we are told, are to help with mopping up operations, like Operation Anaconda. In fact, we have just made an open-ended commitment to fight in what may well be developing into another Afghan civil war.