8/7/2019 A Week in the War Afghanistan Mar 30_Apr 4

1/2

A Week in the War: Afghanistan, March 30-April 4, 2011

April 4, 2011 | 1740 GMT

A Koran Burning and Social Unrest

Afghanistan has seen substantial protests following the March 20 burning of a copy of the Koran bycontroversial Florida pastor Terry Jones. Unrest began April 1 in the normally peaceful city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh province, where demonstrators overran a U.N. compound, killing three U.N.staffers and four Nepalese guards. (Initial reports suggested that as many as 20 staffers had been killedand that two foreigners had been beheaded.) Some 80 people were reportedly wounded the next day in

Kandahar, where protesters attacked businesses.

Unrest continued in Kandahar through the weekend, as well as in Jalalabad in Nangarhar province andin Parwan province. In Kandahar and Jalalabad, the demonstrators took to main highways and attemptedto block traffic. At least 10 people were killed in the violence in Kandahar over the weekend.

That it took almost two weeks between the burning of the Koran and the onset of unrest suggests adeliberate campaign to rile people up. This is similar to the way the initial release of controversialDanish cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed went largely unnoticed until later protests gainedtraction across the region. While Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the NATO-led InternationalSecurity Assistance Force (ISAF) and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, apologized for and condemned theKoran burning (as did President Barack Obama), the incident came just as American servicemen wenton trial for killing Afghan civilians and following the release of photos of American soldiers posingwith the body of a dead Afghan.

What all this means is that after nearly a decade of occupying Afghanistan, the American-led coalitionis already in a very precarious position, particularly as it tries to win over hearts and minds using acounterinsurgency strategy. Frustration with night raids and civilian casualties has been mounting foryears, and the ISAF has always faced an uphill battle in the war of perception.

It is hard to imagine that the actions of a single individual on the other side of the world could affect acounterinsurgency campaign, but inflammatory acts even at a distance can ignite longstandingfrustrations. In Afghanistan, the Florida incident galvanized a wide swath of a largely rural,conservative and decidedly non-secular society against the liberal, secular and Western countries thatconstitute the ISAF. And it is significant that the unrest began in a place like Mazar-i-Sharif, where theTalibans presence and influence is much more limited and where the ISAF has had much more success

than in other parts of the country. The protests cannot simply be written off as Taliban-provoked; manyanti-Taliban elements in Afghanistan are expressing outrage over the Koran burning, and condemnation

of the act by Petraeus and Obama has done little to calm the unrest.

It is far from clear how sustained this weeks unrest will be. But one thing is certain: It is symptomaticof frustrations that run deep throughout Afghan society. Whether or not this particular round of protestscontinues, it has significant implications for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and its aggressive

8/7/2019 A Week in the War Afghanistan Mar 30_Apr 4

2/2

timetable.

Taliban Attack in Waygal

The Talibans military efforts continue as well, with reports March 29 that the district center of Waygal

in Nuristan province had been overrun by Taliban forces, causing police and government officials toflee to the provincial capital. Waygal was also reportedly the destination of the police recruitskidnapped last week in the neighboring Chapa Dara district. Both lie close to the long-contested Pech

Valley, from which American forces have been withdrawn.

This sort of development is nothing new for the Taliban, and it takes place in an area where the UnitedStates has deliberately decided to remove its forces from the equation. Neither Nuristan nor Kunarprovince contains any key terrain or other areas of interest in the U.S. strategy, and the success or failureof the U.S.-led effort will not hang on what happens in this isolated corner of eastern Afghanistan. But itis a reminder of the tenuous position of Afghan security forces and local government as the ISAF inchestoward July, when it will begin handing over full responsibility for security in certain areas of the

country to Kabul.

ANA Raid in Pul-e-Alam

Elsewhere, in the Pul-e-Alam district of Logar, which lies between two areas of interest for the ISAF,the Afghan National Armys (ANA) 4th Brigade of the 203rd Corps reportedly conducted anindependent, quick-reaction raid and succeeded in killing nine insurgents. While Afghan security forcescontinue to suffer challenges in terms of intelligence, planning and logistics, it is independent Afghanarmy operations like the one in Pul-e-Alam that will increasingly indicate the capabilities of Afghansecurity forces as they begin to take on more and more responsibility for security with increasingly

limited support from the ISAF.

ISR Capabilities

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell announcedthis past week that $1 billion in aerostat (lighter than air) and fixed platforms for electro-optical sensorsand turrets are being surged into Afghanistan. In high demand, these platforms are geared towardproviding organic intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities at lower echelons ofthe ISAF. As the United States and its allies prepare to do more with fewer troops, having theintelligence to employ them more efficiently will be critical.

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Contact Us Copyright 2011 Stratfor. All rights reserved.