In the debate over how to plan for the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, a new argument has surfaced about who, exactly, American forces should be fighting. Last week on this site, the RAND scholar Seth Jones made a case that NATO's focus on the Haqqani network -- the criminal terrorist syndicate based in western Pakistan -- diverts attention from what he contends is a far more menacing and long-term threat, the Quetta Shura, as the leadership of the Afghan Taliban is known.
But Jones' analysis does not reflect the evolving nature of the insurgency. During a recent week-long tour of southern and eastern Afghanistan I took at the invitation of General John Allen, the senior American and NATO commander there, I saw first-hand how the enemy has changed in recent years. Since the summer of 2009, NATO's battle against the Quetta Shura in the south of Afghanistan has reduced the Taliban to a shell of its former self, a fact that alters Jones' estimation of the group's relative strength. The Haqqani network, by contrast, is on the rise, perhaps at its most capable and lethal level since its reconstitution in 2002. Although the Haqqanis are nominally part of the Quetta Shura, they are poised, with the help of the Pakistani intelligence services, to become the most significant long-term strategic threat to stability in Afghanistan.
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