Six months agoThe Captain’s Journal was issuing warnings about Operation Enduring Freedom being headed in the wrong direction, while General Rodriguez (and U.S. intelligence in Afghanistan) were denying that there would be any such thing as a spring Taliban offensive.  The only offensive, they claimed, would be the U.S. offensive to route the Taliban.  True, the Marines have had tremendous success in and around Garmser, but this is only localized success at the hands of a few companies of Marines.  If there is any current doubt about the need for force projection – a recurring theme as our readers know – May’s combat deaths in Afghanistan outnumbered Iraq.

It’s a grim gauge of U.S. wars going in opposite directions: American and allied combat deaths in Afghanistan in May passed the monthly toll in Iraq for the first time.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates used the statistical comparison to dramatize his point to NATO defense ministers that they need to do more to get Afghanistan moving in a better direction. He wants more allied combat troops, more trainers and more public commitment.

More positively, the May death totals point to security improvements in Iraq that few thought likely a year ago.

But the deterioration in Afghanistan suggests a troubling additional possibility: a widening of the war to Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaida have found haven.

By the Pentagon’s count, 15 U.S. and two allied troops were killed in action in Iraq last month, a total of 17. In Afghanistan it was 19, including 14 Americans and five coalition troops. One month does not make a trend, but in this case the statistics are so out of whack with perceptions of the two wars that Gates could use them to drive home his point about Afghanistan.

Even when non-combat deaths are included, the overall May toll was greater in Afghanistan than in Iraq: a total of 22 in Afghanistan, including 17 Americans, compared with 21 in Iraq, including 19 Americans, according to an Associated Press count.

The comparison is even more remarkable if you consider that there are about three times more U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq than in Afghanistan. Since the Iraq war began in March 2003, there have been just under 4,100 U.S. deaths — including more than 3,300 killed in action — according to the Pentagon’s count. In the Afghan campaign, which began in October 2001, the U.S. death total is just over 500, including 313 killed in action.

We also covered the recent Afghan prison break in Kandaharreleasing 450 Taliban back into the population.  So as to remediate any doubt remaining about a resurgent Taliban, their public relations has given us a glimpse into the operation.

Yesterday, Sarposa’s entire population of 1,100 inmates – including murderers, bandits and about 450 hardened Islamic militants – was enjoying freedom after an audacious Taliban attack engineered one of the biggest mass jail breaks in history.

In a spectacular raid which confounded hopes that the Taliban was now on the back foot, a group of about 30 heavily armed insurgents launched an assault on the prison on Friday evening, using two suicide bombers to blow open the gates and then massacring at least 15 dazed guards as they tried to put up a fight.

The inmates fled into the night through the lush pomegranate groves that surround the building before coalition troops could arrive from their base on the far side of the city. Convoys of Taliban-driven getaway minibuses were waiting nearby with engines running.

Yesterday, as coalition and Afghan officials launched an urgent review of security in every jail in the country and declared a state of emergency in Kandahar, Taliban supporters around the region began slaughtering sheep in anticipation of being reunited with their jailed relations.

There is another problem regarding prisons.  The recent SCOTUS decision will make it difficult to bring arrested enemy combatants to the U.S. for formal prosecution, but building prisons in Afghanistan just got harder.

“There has been no agreement with the ministry of justice. We cannot speak about this.” Members of the Afghan parliament also pleaded ignorance of the plans.

“This issue has not been referred to parliament,” said Shukria Barakzai, a member of the lower house. She insisted that parliamentary action would be required before construction can start.

“According to the laws of Afghanistan, the land cannot be given away,” she said. “No country has a right to make a prison here. And not a single criminal should be handed over to foreigners. This prison at Bagram not only violates the constitution, it calls into question the legitimacy of the present government.”

President Hamid Karzai refused to comment on the issue.

But others say plans for the new prison have become an issue between Washington and Kabul.

“The government will not say this formally, but this issue has been raised between high-ranking authorities of Afghanistan and the United States,” said Fazel Rahman Oria, editor of Erada Daily newspaper.

“It shows the climate of distrust between the two countries.” Oria also speculated that building a massive detention facility could deepen growing resentment of the foreign military presence in the country.

The rules of engagement orient U.S. servicemen to arrest combatants, while the SCOTUS gives them constitutional rights and foreign countries prohibit the construction of prisons to hold them.  And in another sign of shifting tactics away from direct kinetic confrontation and towards standoff weapons and covert action, four U.S. Marines out of Twentynine Palms died from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in what was the “worst single attack on U.S. or coalition forces in Afghanistan this year.”  The campaign badly needs force projection to kill the enemy.