In an exclusive interview with NATO TV, ISAF Commander General David Petraeus says he expects violence to increase again this year as he continues his counterinsurgency campaign across Afghanistan but he is seeing signs of discord appear within the Taliban.
Comments
Think he dodged the "transition" question, though. We may need to transition when conditions aren't right- because there is a significant minority who won't show progress until we do leave- thinking they can keep us and milk us longer.
But the more difficult issue- which we rarely discuss- is that GIRoA doesn't agree with our COIN strategy- so we CAN'T transition until we are either told to or we can accept negative metrics as ANSF stop doing what we are doing and our assessments "tell" us we're losing. Part of that is very sad: because we're so metrics driven. But the other part is something we are ignoring: GIRoA and Afghanistan as a whole don't buy into IJC's counterinsurgency fight. Kind of hard to transition if the host government will just stop the COIN fight as soon as you do...
Response to "Anonymous"
Nobody can predict the future exactly. But with information collection and trends we can get pretty close. GEN Petraeus did an excellent job of describing the most likely response, to his counterinsurgency campaign, by the insurgents and their leadership in this coming spring and summer.