http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/reading-into-the-state-of-the-taliban/

February 23, 2012

Reading Into the 'State of the Taliban'

By ROD NORDLAND and ALISSA J. RUBIN

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Last month a report compiled for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force by special operations interrogators provided a negative view of the alliance's prospects -- in the view of Taliban prisoners. [1]

The full text of that NATO report, State of the Taliban January 6, 2012, has not previously been published, although excerpts have appeared on the Web sites of the BBC and The Times of London, who both first reported it. Then the report was obtained by The New York Times, and the following has been copied from that. This is the full text but without photographs and graphics, which have been redacted by The Times in order to protect the source of the original document. In keeping with the Geneva Conventions, The Times has also removed the names of detainees.

The report, circulated among a fairly wide audience in ISAF and the diplomatic community of coalition countries, bears careful reading, and we have annotated it to clarify and amplify its points.

Several of them stood out for us. Whatever happened to our ballyhooed counterinsurgency strategy? There is almost no reference to COIN here, direct or indirect. In contrast, the description given of what the Taliban are up to sometimes sounds as if they are the ones practicing it most assiduously.

The tone of the report is striking for its sympathetic presentation of the viewpoints of the thousands of detainees interviewed and suggests a high level of rapport between the thousands of captives and the interrogators. Gone are the bad old days of waterboarding, by the sound of it; one can't avoid the impression at times of a sort of inverted Stockholm Syndrome, in which the captors identify with the captives.

Another important point is in the section on negotiations with the Taliban. In it, NATO interrogators recommend making clear to the Taliban that "everything is on the table" in a peace negotiation. That line contradicts the U.S. State Department, whose diplomats have insisted that any negotiation would be based on an understanding that the Taliban would accept the constitution, women's rights and the sovereignty of the Afghan government.

One flaw in the report's presentation is that it describes the views of Afghan civilians toward the Taliban as if those interviewed were representative of the country as a whole. In fact, the vast majority of people detained are from about 10 provinces with overwhelmingly Pashtun populations. Most of the rest of the country has a far more skeptical and antagonistic view of the Taliban.

Finally, the Taliban assessment that they can take over much of the country contradicts sharply NATO's insistence that the Taliban have been demoralized and their fighting capability seriously degraded by the surge, night raids and the kill or capture tactics of special operations forces.

While it is very difficult to know what the Taliban really think, it would seem that they are less discouraged than the military is willing to admit in public statements.

The American military's reaction to leaked documents has routinely been to refuse to comment on classified matters, but it quickly made an exception for this report, insisting that it was not a piece of military analysis informed by detainee interrogations but rather a bunch of detainees spouting party line and propaganda. Nonetheless, the report often does have an analytical bent that seems to go beyond the scope of simply reporting what the detainees had to say.

Read the full, annotated report here. [2]

Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter at @rodnordland.

Follow Alissa J. Rubin on Twitter at @Alissanyt.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/02/world/asia/nato-plays-down-report-of-collaboration-between-taliban-and-pakistan.html

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/asia/23atwar-taliban-report-docviewer.html