{"id":566728,"date":"2010-05-17T14:11:10","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T18:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=84943"},"modified":"2010-05-17T14:11:10","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T18:11:10","slug":"are-there-enough-troops-for-a-%e2%80%98rising-tide-of-security%e2%80%99-in-kandahar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/566728","title":{"rendered":"Are There Enough Troops for a \u2018Rising Tide of Security\u2019 in Kandahar?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/84803\/after-karzai-obama-meet-agreement-on-two-processes\">rising tide of security<\/a>&#8221; taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively subordinate role to governance and economic functions. But that&#8217;s vastly easier said than done. And McClatchy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.csmonitor.com\/World\/Asia-South-Central\/2010\/0517\/Afghanistan-war-Kandahar-offensive-is-now-in-the-slow-lane\">carries a blind quote <\/a>casting doubt on whether the basic prerequisites for that &#8220;rising tide&#8221; are even in evidence:<span id=\"more-84943\"><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>U.S. defense officials and defense analysts said that McChrystal used 10,000 troops in Helmand to gain control of a rural river valley with about 50,000 residents. But in Kandahar, however, Afghanistan&#8217;s second largest city, with an estimated population of 800,000, he&#8217;s calling for just 20,000 troops.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;None of this makes any sense,&#8221; said a U.S. defense official. &#8220;If it took you 10,000 (U.S. troops) to do Marjah, there aren&#8217;t enough troops (for Kandahar).&#8221; The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And Marja isn&#8217;t in any important sense <em><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/84901\/when-the-marja-farmers-dont-come-home\">done<\/a><\/em>, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hamid Karzai went home to Afghanistan last week having reached a modus vivendi with the U.S. on the non-offensive in Kandahar. The Obama administration, the military, NATO and Karzai now speak of a &#8220;rising tide of security&#8221; taking hold over the southern city, with security operations playing a decisively subordinate role to governance and economic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-566728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}