Afghanistan

Sunday's New York Times Magazine article by Luke Mogelson takes a look at the hard gains being won to buy breathing room for transition to Afghan forces.

Year after year, month after month, Helmand has ranked as the deadliest, most violent province in Afghanistan. Nowhere else comes close. ... During the coming year, the number of marines there will shrink by the thousands; as early as this summer, many Marine positions will be shuttered or handed over to the Afghan Army and the police. No one expects the insurgency to be defeated by then. The issue has long ceased to be how we can decisively expunge the Taliban — we can’t. Instead, the question is: How can we forestall its full-fledged resurgence upon our departure? Toward the end of this year’s fighting season, just before the winter rains, I spent seven weeks with marines across much of Helmand, and everywhere the answer was basically the same. First, leave behind a proficient national security force. And second, win them as much breathing room as time allows.

Thanks to Dave Maxwell for the pointer.

The New York Times' Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt report:

The United States’ plan to wind down its combat role in Afghanistan a year earlier than expected relies on shifting responsibility to Special Operations forces that hunt insurgent leaders and train local troops, according to senior Pentagon officials and military officers. These forces could remain in the country well after the NATO mission ends in late 2014. ...

Senior Pentagon officials involved in the planning acknowledge that a military effort with a smaller force and a more focused mission could be easier to explain to Americans who have tired of the large counterinsurgency campaigns of Iraq and, previously, Afghanistan. ...

The plan first calls for creating a two-star command position overseeing the entire Special Operations effort in Afghanistan. Next, the three-star corps headquarters that currently commands the day-to-day operations of the war — and is held by an Army officer from the conventional force — would be handed over to a Special Operations officer.

From the Washington Post:

A Jordanian double agent’s suicide bombing of the CIA base in eastern Afghanistan received days of media coverage. The CIA had been tricked into welcoming one of al-Qaeda’s own onto the agency’s base, enabling him to detonate a vest laden with explosives.

In October 2010, the CIA released results of the agency’s internal investigation into the Khost province attack, fueling another round of stories that Jennifer Matthews, a CIA operative, was partially responsible. Matthews and her team, the report concluded, failed to follow the agency’s procedures for vetting informants. 

One of Matthews’s severest critics was her uncle, Dave Matthews, a retired CIA official who had helped inspire his niece to join the agency. Now Gary Anderson, Matthews's husband, and other relatives who once agreed not to speak with the media are breaking their silence to talk about Matthews’s life and death and about how her promotion to a perilous CIA posting has divided them.