By Andrew Gray
Reuters, 05 December 2007
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - NATO has developed a standardized system for tracking progress in Afghanistan because the war so far has been judged largely using anecdotal evidence, the alliance's top commander said on Tuesday.
NATO headquarters had drawn up a set of 63 indicators to measure trends in the fight against Taliban Islamists and other militants in Afghanistan, where violence has surged over the past two years, U.S. Army Gen. John Craddock said.
"These metrics may not be right and we will probably have to adjust them, but we want to start out now," Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told a news conference in Washington.
"I would submit to you that, to date, most of the assessments of progress have been against anecdotal information," he said.
Asked why such an effort to measure progress was taking place only now, some six years after U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government, Craddock did not answer directly.
He said one challenge was bringing together data from the many different organizations working in Afghanistan.
International efforts in Afghanistan are largely measured now according using statistics such as how many kilometers of roads or how many schools had been built, he said.
"All good things," Craddock said. "But the question in my mind is: What's the effect it's produced?"
For example, he said, when a road was built, did it allow local farmers to get more crops to market, so they could earn more and be less susceptible to militant recruitment? Or were militants preventing people from using the road?
STRUGGLE FOR STATISTICS
Analysts and reporters have struggled to get information on the Afghan war. Statistics have generally been much easier to obtain for the war in Iraq.
"Most of the official reporting on Afghanistan -- whether US, NATO, or allied country -- is little more than public relations material," Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote in a report released this week.
Craddock, who took up his post last December, said work began on the new effort about six months ago and a first analysis of trends was due in late January. He did not say whether the information would be made public.
There is widespread agreement that violence in Afghanistan is worsening. The United Nations estimates the number of security incidents has risen by 20 to 30 percent from last year.
Craddock also said the war was not just a fight pitting the Afghan government and NATO's 40,000-strong International Security Assistance Force against the Taliban.
He used the broader term "opposing militant forces" to describe NATO's enemies and said they included the Taliban as well as other hardliners, tribal warlords and criminals.
"While in most cases they do not work in an organized fashion, they do work toward a common goal -- that of preventing the democratically elected government of Afghanistan from becoming the dominant governing body," Craddock said.
Citation: Andrew Gray. "NATO revamps measures of Afghan progress," Reuters, 05 December 2007.
Original URL: http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-30829020071204