As Afghanistan fails, top US newspapers swoon over Harry  Prince Harry is leaving Afghanistan.
As the global media's attention focuses on the third in line to the British crown, and the British media's decision to keep silent about his travails, the status of the US mission in Afghanistan has gone almost unnoticed. Few major outlets focused on a briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday in which Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell admitted that the Afghan government controls just 30 percent of the country after six years of US troops and billions of dollars in aid.
"The Taliban was able to control ... in the area about 10 to 11 percent of the country," McConnell said.
He added that tribal leaders hold court over the remaining 60 percent.
The key to the Taliban's success? McConnell said the group's succor comes from an "opportunity for safe haven in Pakistan." Pakistan is led by Pervez Musharraf, a military strongman abetted by billions of dollars in US aid.
The capital's leading newspaper, The Washington Post, put Prince Harry on its front page today. Meanwhile, the Post devoted three paragraphs in its "World in Brief" section -- not an article -- to McConnell's testimony on Thursday.
The Post's story on Harry, which centered on the British media's decision to obey an embargo, ran 1,400 words. The brief on McConnell ran 110. It did not include any quotations from the nation's top intelligence chief, and instead focused on Afghanistan's denial of McConnell's remarks.
Trouble in Afghanistan is nothing new. Afghan president Hamid Karzai is often referred to in diplomatic circles as the "mayor of Kabul," because his control extends little further than the borders of the fledgling government's capital.
But McConnell's comments directly contradict remarks made by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates earlier this month. Gates testified Feb. 6 that the Taliban controlled no part of the country.
"The Taliban no longer occupy any territory in Afghanistan," Gates remarked. "They were thrown out of Musa Qala a few weeks ago before over Christmas. And the Taliban have had some real setbacks. Probably 50 of their leaders have been killed or captured over the past year, and we know that that’s had an impact on their capability and also on their morale."
The story received brief treatment by wire agencies. From search results on its website, The New York Times appears to have only run AP stories on McConnell's testimony.
Like all British papers save the UK Independent, the UK Guardian ran with Harry on their front cover. But the Guardian devoted an entire story Friday to the failures of the allied Afghan mission. In a story, "Afghan mission close to failing - US," they replayed McConnell's comments and added reporting of their own.
"A big injection of foreign troops has failed to bring stability," reporters Declan Walsh and Richard Norton Taylor wrote. "The US has almost 50,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and - twice as many as in 2004 - while the UK has 7,700, mostly in Helmand. Another 2,200 US marines are due to arrive next month to combat an expected Taliban surge.
"Analysts believe the Taliban is successfully adapting the brutal guerrilla tactics that have served Iraqi insurgents so well," they continued. "The six British soldiers killed in Helmand over the past three months were victims of roadside bombs. The drugs trade is swelling the Taliban coffers - according to the highest estimates, 40% of profits, or tens of millions of pounds, go to the insurgency. Attacks have made the main road from Kandahar to Kabul too dangerous for foreigners. Afghan truck drivers travel with armed escort."
Another top intelligence official at the Senate hearing, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Michael Maples told lawmakers that the gains can be attributed in part to aid from the Al-Qaeda international terror network.
"We believe that Al-Qaeda has expanded its support to the Afghan insurgency," Maples said at the hearing.
Afghanistan has in the last year seen its most violent period since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, increasing pressure on the United States and its allies in NATO to beef up their military contingents to avoid the country falling again to the radical Islamists.
"At the same time, Al-Qaeda presents an increased threat to Pakistan, while it continues to plan, support and direct transnational attacks from its de facto safe haven in Pakistan's largely ungoverned frontier provinces," Maples told the senators at the hearing.
With AFP.
 
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