#several sources saying ‘these two fought to a stalemate’

[valkyurii]

it’s actually amazing how many people hear miquella say “my loyal blade” and think he means radahn. in what world was radahn ever his loyal blade? i feel like even if he had said “my dear sister” ppl would have still been like “oh he means ranni, right?”

[hergrim]

On Michael Livingston's Alternative Location for the Battle of Agincourt

From a recent answer on /r/AskHistorians:

Introduction

For over a hundred and fifty years, the location of the Battle of Agincourt has been known with 100% certainty. The two best, most reliable chronicles - by eyewitnesses, no less - give it a very precise location. That is, in the fields between the villages of Azincourt and Tramecourt. The terrain even matches the description of the battle, with the French being "funneled" from the wider northern end to the narrower center of the field and becoming so compressed as a result that they couldn't use their weapons.

So, the question is, if we know everything there is to know about the Battle of Agincourt and it all matches up perfectly, why has Michael Livingston chosen to dispute these well known facts? After all, he says himself in a recent podcast that he has no desire to go around being contrary about the location of battles just for the sake of it. The answer to this question is that there are actually a number of inconsistencies between primary sources, physical evidence and issues such as the area needed to fight a battle on the scale of Agincourt, and Michael Livingston is not the first to raise some of the problems, which have been slowly gaining attention since the mid-2000s.

With that said, I can't say that I agree with Michael Livingston's interpretation and I think that the traditional location is much closer to where the battle was fought. Livingston does bring up a number of good points, in particular the issue surrounding the length of the English line, and I think these are enough to render the precise traditional location invalid, but I ultimately don't think the bulk of the evidence supports his proposal. But more on this and my own alternative site later. Let's start with where current scholarship agrees the Battle of Agincourt was fought.

The Development of Tradition

By and large, the placement of the Battle of Agincourt between the villages of Azincourt and Tramecourt is down to Jean Le Fevre’s chronicle of the 1460s and the close collaboration or copying by Jean de Waurin at around the same time. They are very specific that the French a) camped between Azincourt and Tramecourt and b) that the battle was fought there the next day. Although Waurin was only 15 at the time and not an active participant, both he and Le Fevre (a herald) had strong connections to the English and Burgundian factions and both were well versed in war. Waurin would even fight less than a decade later at the Battle of Verneuil, which has been described by some as a "second Agincourt".

These two authors, along with Enguerrand de Monstrelet, whose chronicles both authors relied heavily upon, have become the main accounts used to reconstruct the battle, with other sources being used to supplement, rather than inform, the narrative. This is most a result of the clear, non-nonsense style of the authors and the fact that Le Fevre and Waurin, being eyewitnesses and steeped in the military culture of the period, must have been offering their own considerable experience to the mix.

Broadly speaking, the result of this is that the traditional location has been regarded as well established and unambiguous. While there have been minor modifications to how the armies were arranged and the exact place where the English halted their advance (compare J.H. Round to Clifford J. Rogers, this has had no effect on the consensus. And this is where Tim Sutherland and Michael Livingston come in.

The Heretical Archaeologist

In 2002, battlefield archaeologist Tim Sutherland was hired to survey the traditional location of the Battle of Agincourt as part of a Battlefield Detectives documentary on the battle. To his surprise, virtually no medieval artifacts were found in the fields surveyed and no arrowheads at all. Having worked previously on the site of the Battle of Towton, Sutherland expected there to be many arrowheads as well as other medieval finds - buckles, broken pottery, coins, etc. The lack of these, combined with a lack of the alleged mass graves after a 2007 survey, started him thinking seriously about alternative sites for the battle.

His initial proposal was a site to the north, with the French positioning themselves near Ruisseauville and the English taking up position several hundred meters north of Agincourt, with a small valley between them. He drew this conclusion from a combination of the oldest maps placing the battle to the west of Agincourt, a number of chronicles referring to the battle as being close to Agincourt and Ruisseauville, some references to the land the English were standing on being much firmer than the land the French were standing on and his reading of the Gesta Henrici Quinti, which he suggested said that a small valley lay between the two armies on the 25th of October.

The major problem with this interpretation is that the valley between the armies was only a factor in the stalemate of the 24th of October, and it was also equally clearly near Blagny, not Ruisseauville. The Gesta is clear that, as the English made their way up from Blagny and the Ternoise river valley, the detected the arrival of the French army on the other side of this small valley, which runs from Tramecourt to the Ternoise. After a stand off, the French moved off towards the English left (i.e. towards Tramecourt) and the English changed position to remove any chance of their being outflanked.

Subsequently, Sutherland has suggested that the valley in question might have been a small valley to the west of Maisoncelle known as the "Morival" (the "Valley of Death"), based on the Chronique de Normandie's specific statement that the battle was fought in a valley, the attested closeness of a valley in the Gesta and an area known on the 1825 as L'Anglais ("The English") that would be appropriate for an English camp if the French were on the western side of the Morival. This is where Michael Livingston comes into play.

The Accidental Revisionist

As I've noted above, Michael Livingston doesn't mean to suggest that centuries of scholarship about the location of battlefields is wrong, he just ends up doing so when he sees a disconnect between the primary sources and the landscape. Perhaps his most controversial piece of revisionism is his total relocation of the Battle of Crecy several kilometers south east of the traditional location to Domvast, but which was presented along side an incredibly valuable collection of primary sources in both original text and translation.

Michael Livingston's Proposed Site

Understandably, Livingston's article in the Medieval Warfare Magazine is significantly less comprehensive and I'm going to be upfront that there may well be elements that were edited out for reasons of space but which might add more weight to some of his arguments. Nonetheless, for such a short piece of work, Livingston managed to provide a wide array of arguments as to why the Battle of Agincourt couldn't have been fought at the traditional location. What I'm going to do is go through them point by point, summarising them and providing an assessment on how well they stack up.

1) The Traditional Battlefield Is Too Cramped

The argument that Livingston starts his article off with is that, even assuming the lowest number of English (5900) and reducing that by 10% to account for casualties on the march, the English army would be too broad to fit. With 5300 men arranged in ranks four deep, the English line would be 1325 men abreast and, with 1.5m2 needed for each of them to fight effectively, the English line would be a total length of 1987 meters long. Even placing the archers forward at a 45 degree angle, which he has doubts about, the formation would still be 1435 meters from tip to tip and couldn't possibly fit on the traditional site.

This is Livingston's most solid argument. Almost every author has assumed that Tito Livio Frulovisi’s remark that the English were "scarcely four deep" refers only to the men-at-arms and that the English archers were seven or eight ranks deep. This is necessary in order to fit the English into the traditional location, even with the more usual allowance of 90cm per man. The only other author whom I'm aware of placing the archers only 4 deep is Robert Hardy, who maintains that archers can't shoot past each other on flat ground if they're placed more than three or four deep. And, reading the context of the line, where the Frulovisi is comparing the English and French armies, I think that it's clear that the whole of the English army is being referred to here, not just the archers.

With that said, I do disagree with Livingston's interpretation of each soldier needing 1.5m2 of space to fight in. I'm not sure where he sourced this figure and I agree with it, but I believe the evidence points much more towards it the area needed being 1 meter wide and 1.5 meters deep, not 1.5 meters wide and 1 meter deep.

Secondly, the space between ranks is often more important than the space between files. Thomas Digges, for instance, required that every pikeman have only 3 feet of space across their front, but seven feet of space total in front and behind (three in front, three behind, pikeman occupies one). This is also similar to the similar spacing to the three feet by six feet given by Vegetius, Polybius and later Hellensitic authors. Christine de Pizan, although not specifying a spacing, emphasizes that the vanguard of an army, fighting on foot, should "arranged close together, so that one should not pass another". Combined with the iconographic evidence above, this strongly suggests that the men-at-arms at Agincourt would have been fighting in relatively close files, but not necessarily in close ranks.

Firstly, there are a large number of contemporary manuscripts with miniatures depicting quite tight, compact battles where the lance is the primary weapon. Even those where some grappling or fighting with swords, axes or daggers occurs heavily resemble 16th century depictions of pike combat.

As the use of lances by the French is well attested, phrases such as "the first mingling of lances" are used to describe the battle and the English had a long history of fighting with lances while dismounted, both before and after Agincourt, it's most likely both sides were in close order and fighting with either short or long lances and therefore in close order.

2. There's no Archaeological Evidence

Livingston notes the work of Tim Sutherland and rightly suggests that a proper re-examination of the battle site is necessary. I'm in total agreement here.

3. The Oldest Maps Show the Battle Elsewhere

As noted by Sutherland, the Cassini map of the area showed the battle off to the west of Azincourt rather than the traditional location between Azincourt and Tramecourt. Livingston, in conjunction with J. Wesley Snyder III, has found an even earlier map, from the start of the 18th century, by Guillaume de l’Isle that shows the battle in the same location.

The issue with this is whether Cassini copied de l’Isle's location of the battle or arrived at it from his own research. The question is unlikely to ever be answered since, while Cassini undoubtedly had access to de l’Isle, his maps had much greater detail and showed more local features. This might suggest that Cassini had access to local knowledge, but it doesn't prove that he used it. Livingston certainly hasn't put much faith in Cassini before, arguing that he misplaced the Battle of Crecy through either his own misinterpretation or by the misinterpretation of an earlier scholar, so I consider this a very weak argument.

4. The Woods on the English Left Were West of Maisoncelle

Livingston, using the Gesta, recreates a sequence of events where the English and French faced off across the valley to the right of Maisoncelle, shifted position during the afternoon and then moved off to their quarters for the night. As the woods to the English left in this scenario were west of Maisoncelle, the French much have bivouacked there. Azincourt would be too far away in this scenario for the two camps to still be within earshot - as the sources make very clear was the case - so the traditional battlefield can't be where the battle was fought.

This is where we come to the major flaw in Livingston's argument. Livingston's summary of the movements is accurate up to the point where the two armies are facing each other across the valley. The problem is this sentence: "Gesta next describes the two armies jockeying for position, likely gauging the other’s intentions and trying to organize themselves." This completely reverses the order of events given by the Gesta:

In addition to this primary source evidence (the same details are given by other English sources), just looking at the topography makes the sequence of events presented by Livingston unlikely. While the valley is relatively easy to cross close to Tramecourt, this is the area where Henry would likely have tried to keep one flank, in order to prevent the French from crossing easily, so that they would need to deal with steep slopes closer to the Ternoise. And, if Henry didn't manage to get in position to stop an easy crossing close to Tramecourt, the English and Burgundian chroniclers would not have presented the situation as a stalemate where both sides prepared for battle but nothing happened.

When for a while the opposing ranks had seen and considered our measure and smallness of number, they brought themselves to a field that lay beyond a wood, which was near on the left between us and them, where our route towards Calais was. Our king, supposing that the men would thus either encircle the wood, so that they could come upon him via that route, or else would go round through the more distant woods that neighboured it and surround us on every side, immediately removed his columns and positioned them in constant opposition to them.

The author is completely unambiguous. The first movement the two armies made was the French going off to evening quarters to the left of the English position. The English, afraid they were going to be attacked on the flank, then moved position to oppose the French movement. Then, thinking that the French might "go round through the more distant woods that neighboured it and surround us on every side", they re-positioned again to take that possibility into account. This sentence is of particular importance, as the early maps show that the the woods are primarily along the top of the river valley. The cadastral maps similarly show a heavy bias towards woods along the top of the valley rather than closer to the villages, and reinforce my view that there were no significant "more distant woods" that the French could circle around behind to come around the English rear. However, if the English had maintained their initial position then they could reasonably have expected to be cut off if the French went around the woods at Azincourt to come at them from behind.

5. References to More Varied Terrain

As Sutherland noted in his own works, a couple of French sources refer to valleys being involved in the battle or to terrain that isn't as flat as the traditional location. A allegorical poem written soon after the battle says: "The shepherds in that flat place cried out with great, strong and high voices making the deep valleys and high trees resound with such raging that it seemed all would fall into the abyss itself at the sound of the very cry” and, at the end of the battle, "The streams run through the valleys, the rivers run red". The Chronique de Normandie also specifically mentions the battle being fought in a battle. In addition to these references to different terrain, Livingston questions whether the muddy field that formed such a crucial part of the battle could have formed at the traditional location.

I don't put much stock in La Pastoralet offering any significant evidence about the immediate circumstances of the battle due to its allegorical nature. There were what might be poetically "deep valleys" behind and in front of the battlefield, while the rivers running red with blood is a pretty generic and heavily poetic term that I don't believe has to refer to literal rivers or streams playing a role in the battle. As for the Chronique de Normandie, it is the only source to suggest that the battle took place in a valley, in comparison to many other sources heavily implying flat terrain.

The second part, about how the ground where the battle took place could be so muddy if it was as flat as the traditional location, is easy to answer: Thomas Walsingham, the Monk of St-Denis, the Chronique de Ruisseauville and the three Burgundians specify that the ground had only been ploughed and sewn recently. The Monk of St-Denis and the Burgundians add that the French camping on this ground had worsened the situation - the Burgundians in particular blame the exercising of the horses in front of the camp during the night for the quagmire - and the well attested rain the night before completed the mess. Since the area between the Azincourt and Tramecourt is relatively flat, it does not drain as well as the land that slopes back towards Maisoncelle and Blagny, the water would have absolutely saturated the ground and, as recent tests have shown, is in any case far more clingy than most mud.

6. The Road to Calais Doesn't Go Through the Battlefield

This argument is based on the English sources specifically mentioning that the French were camped across the road to Calais. The main road at the time went through Azincourt and then on to Ruisseauville, which means that the French could only be camped across this road if they were west of Maisoncelle and literally camped on this road.

This can be easily countered. Firstly, a minor road did run from Maisoncelle, between Azincourt and Tramecourt, and up to Ruisseauville, where it joined the road to Calais. While the author of the Gesta might have been referring to the main road, he might also have been referring to this one.

Secondly, a number of chroniclers mention the French sleeping at Azincourt and Ruisseauville the night before the battle. In addition to Monstrelet, Waurin and le Fèvre, the Mémoires de Pierre de Fenin (written by a nobleman from the area) and the Chronique de Ruisseauville both specify that the French slept in those villages. As Azincourt and Ruisseauville are both on the main road to Calais, the French would indeed have been camped long the road to Calais and barring the English way.

Thirdly, from a tactical point of view, the English had no choice but to attack the French when they camped between Azincourt and Tramecourt and drew up their lines of battle on the morning of the 25th. Had the English attempted to march around the woods of Azincourt to take the road to Calais, they would have exposed their flank to an attack while they were in order of march. And, even if the French didn’t attack them then, they could still easily re-position themselves to attack the English when they came around Azincourt. That limited Henry to one option alone: attack the French.

7. The Names From the Cadastral Plans are Significant

A final substantial part of Livingston's argument is that the Morival, being the "valley of death", in addition to some other names on the cadastral map, such as "L'Anglais" ("the English"), “La Fosse a Rogne" ("the pit of rotting/the pit of rage") and "La Cloyelle" ("the enclosure") all point towards his new location for the battle.

With regards to these, while "valley of death" certainly sounds like an appropriately named feature of a battle, the others are less useful. "L'Anglais" is only a relatively small area and nowhere near the whole English army could have camped there, so there's no reason to think that the English were concentrated there.

“La Fosse a Rogne" seems to be mistranslated as, according to the late 18th century Nugent's French Dictionary, "rogne" means scurf/scab (skin diseases in particular associated with sheep), which is the main definition in the Dictionnaire du Moyen Français. There is also a definition covering "growl/grumble", as well as one meaning "clippings/cuttings" (especially of coins or nails). The modern informal association with anger may have around in the early 19th century or earlier, but the medieval equivalent "growl/grumble" is rather different from "rage" or "rotting". The term thus almost certainly has nothing to do with the battle or the burial of the bodies afterwards.

Finally, while Livingston notes that "La Cloyelle", which presumably comes from “clayel”/”claiel” and means "the enclosure", right behind where he would place the English men-at-arms and would be where he expects French prisoners to be taken. However, the cadastral maps show it both further north, towards Azincourt and east, towards Tramecourt, as well as the area directly behind when Livingston has place the English men-at-arms. While this may refer to where the battle took place - and I use it in my own argument - it could just as easily be a reference to the fact that the area is "enclosed" by the woods and villages and is spread over too great a distance to support Livingston's argument.

A Revision of Tradition

By now I hope I've demonstrated pretty thoroughly that Livingston's argument doesn't hold much water. However, he does raise one very important point, namely that the traditional site is too small for the English army, that I think allows us to recontextualise some of the primary sources and propose a new site for the battle; still between the villages of Azincourt and Tramecourt, but at the southern end, near Maisoncelle, not at the northern end.

Positions the Night Before the Battle

The change in location that I’m proposing is a relatively modest one, shifting the French a few hundred meters south towards the Maisoncelle end of the field. This is heavily based on Monstrelet, Waurin and le Fèvre’s account of the battle, as they’re the only authors to provide solid geographic information, but a number of other sources support the sequence of events those three provide. Having established that Waurin and le Fèvre’s account of the French camping between Azincourt and Tramecourt is correct, it’s worthwhile looking at their phrasing when they talk about the camp and where the battle was fought. There are two occurrences:

Now we must speak of the French. On the Thursday night, as was said before, they lodged in the field between Agincourt and Tramecourt, where the battle on the next day.

and

The truth was that the French had ordered their battles between two small woods, one close to Agincourt, the other to Tramecourt.

The first quote, on where the French camped, says that they camped on the battlefield, while the second confirms that it was between Azincourt and Tramecourt. The Monk of St-Denis also mentions that the French "had to bivouac in a terrain of considerable extent, newly worked over, and that torrents of rain had flooded and converted into a quagmire", with the later implication that this was ground the marched across to meet the English.

The specification that the French lodged between the woods at the site of the battle has tended to be ignored by authors, with A.H. Burne suggesting that the French camped a little beyond Azincourt, Juliet Barker that the French slept in the villages rather than the field and Christopher Hibbert places them behind the woods of Tramecourt. Anne Curry does acknowledge the French camping between the two towns, but says that their position is hard to place on today’s map.

A large part of the glossing over of Waurin and le Fèvre’s placement of the French almost certainly comes down to the belief that the French started the battle at the northern end of the field and then “funneled” into the narrower section of the battle somewhere near the road between Azincourt and Tramecourt after the English had advanced to there and provoked them. Since the French would have had to have packed up all their tents and chests and moved all their baggage as much as a thousand yards to reach this location if they’d camped in the fields closer to the English, they must therefore have camped beyond the woods, right?

The Gesta’s account of the French moving to “a field that lay beyond a wood” after facing the English across the small valley has added to this interpretation. What most authors ignore, though, is that the Gesta has the French moving off to the nearby “hamlets and shrubbery” once nightfall arrived, which suggests a movement from their position on the distant end of the woods to a more convenient camp.

Additional evidence comes from the multiple references to how close the two armies were camped. Thomas Walsingham wrote that “scarcely 1,000 paces” separated the camps, and Waurin and le Fèvre’s “quarter league” (about 812 meters) is a similar distance. Monstrelet gives the distance as “three bowshots”, which could be anywhere between 200 and 330 meters depending on whether we’re speaking of the “military” bow shot or the “flight” bow shot, and Pierre de Fenin provides a similar distance of 4 bow shots. At the extreme end we have Tito Livio’s “scarcely 250 paces” separating the two camps.

Other chronicles, while not giving distances, do mention that the English could hear the French calling out to one another and that the French were close enough to be disturbed by the quietness of the English. The Gesta talks about the English, still in battle order on the evening of the 24th, listening to the French calling out to each other as they went into their evening quarters, and Monstrelet, Waurin and le Fèvre also mention this tale.

The point of all this is that the French were camped within 1000 paces, most probably within 800 meters, and certainly within distant earshot. With this in mind, they can’t have camped at the far end of the battlefield, as this is about 2000 meters from where the English camped at Maisoncelle. For the French to have camped at the far end of the field and still been within 800 meters of the English, the English would have needed to camp at the southern end of the woods, where the traditional interpretation has them drawing up for battle the next day. This isn’t impossible, as Henry V could simply have camped at Maisoncelle while the bulk of the English camped at the mouth of the woods, but it makes more sense to me for the English to be close to their commanders on the night before such an uncertain battle.

Positions Before the Battle

This in turn changes where the French are positioned at the beginning of the battle. If they camped part way down the field between Azincourt and Tramecourt, then it makes less sense for them to then retreat back to the far edge before they drew up in preparation for the battle. It’s much more likely that they would have advanced their lines beyond their evening camp in preparation for battle. I’ve placed the French vanguard in the area just beyond Tramecourt where there is a slight rise of 130 meters for several reasons. First and foremost, I’m operating under the assumption that the French camp was not significantly beyond the village of Tramecourt and so their vanguard would need to be beyond that point, but not so far as the English couldn’t advance to the woods without hitting the French vanguard.

Secondly, Monstrelet states that Henry sent 200 archers “near Tramecourt, quite close to the rearguard of the French”, while Waurin and le Fèvre, in denying the incident, say that they were allegedly deployed “towards Tramecourt to a meadow close to where the vanguard of the French was positioned." Both of these accounts place either the vanguard or the rearguard near to Tramecourt and, while this could be on the far side of the village in Monstrelet’s version, Waurin and le Fèvre’s version has the archers going towards Tramecourt, not beyond it. This also ties in well with Monstrelet’s account of the English scouts finding no men-at-arms at the village of Agincourt on the morning of the battle and burning a house and barn to try and frighten the French. If the French had been in the traditional location, there still wouldn’t have been any men-at-arms in the village, but burning buildings in front of an army is far less likely to frighten it than burning buildings to their rear and so the attempt would likely not have been made.

Thirdly, there’s some evidence that at least one flank of the battlefield had hedges and thorn bushes or trees. Tito Livio and Pseudo-Elmham mention these on both sides, and the Chronique de Ruisseauville speaks of the French having a hedge of stakes on one side and the woods on another. These are tenuous threads of evidence, as the Gesta, Waurin and le Fèvre in particular don’t mention the hedges or thorn bushes. However, there are two pieces of evidence in favour. Firstly, Tito Livio’s patron, and probably his source for much of his information, was Henry’s brother, Duke Humphrey, who was present at the battle. Secondly, the Napoleonic cadastral maps show two fields west of the area I’ve placed the vanguard that talk about hedges. The furthest is the “end/tip of the hedges”, while the closer is “above the hedges of Azincourt”, which suggests that there were notable hedges east of both fields.

Finally, also based on the Napoleonic maps, the area right in front of where I’ve placed the English was known locally by the early 19th century as “La Cloyelle”. A couple of different etymologies have been suggested, with Anne Curry preferring “clouer” (“to fix/nail”) as the root word and Michael Livinston suggesting the meaning is “enclosure” (presumably from “clayel”/”claiel”), but both are quite appropriate to the position I suggest for the English. If, as Curry suggests, the name derives from the clinging nature of the mud in that area, then it’s more appropriate for it to be there, in front of where I have positioned the English instead of several hundred meters behind them. On the other hand, if Livingston is correct, then this would be a good description of the area “enclosed” by the stakes of the English archers that the French men-at-arms marched into.

The reason why the French chose to position themselves in such a narrow place, which has puzzled even contemporary writers (c.f. the Monk of St-Denis), is in my opinion the result of a deliberate choice rather than sheer incompetence. As many authors over recent decades have pointed out, the French men-at-arms were experienced and good warriors, and even those who were young had seen some fighting, so their choice of terrain is baffling. However, if the plan was to take advantage of the unique terrain and situation they found themselves in and force the English to halve their numbers - as they would need to do if they attacked in a straight line in a line - then this makes sense of their choice.

While the French drew up in the fields between Azincourt and Crecy, Henry V drew his small army up in a single line roughly between the Morival and where the terrain started to drop off towards the valley leading from Tramecourt to the Ternoise. His front covered nearly 1500 meters and was as straight as the terrain allowed. This contradicts previous views of the initial deployment, but I believe that it's very well supported and makes military sense in light of the new French positioning.

From a military standpoint, Henry needed to place his wings very far forward, at an angle of about 45 degrees, if he was to advance in a single battle and this made the vulnerable to attack during their long march forwards (the most distant archers were 400 meters in front of the men-at-arms), and also made them vulnerable to attack from the rear without the traditional forest to protect them. It would be a risky move sending them forwards, and the French might be able to launch an attack that caught him while still deploying.

From the point of view of the sources, there's a lot of support. For starters, the Gesta and Thomas Elmham both state that the English army was too large for the position they were fighting in, even after their advance towards the French, which is something that very few authors have considered fully. While French and Burgundian authors are quick to stress that the narrow position was detrimental to their side during the battle and didn't allow them to properly engage, the fact that two English authors, one an eye-witness and the other close to the king, say that even the English couldn't properly fit is pretty important in light of Livingston's reassessment of deployment width.

More tellingly, however, are the sources which place the wings going forward only during/after the initial English advance:

Thomas Walsingham: "With the banners raised, he ordered his men to proceed in order. He made the archers go first from the right and also from the left."

The Monk of St-Denis: "After he had said these words, he had his army advance about a bow shot and seeing that they were in a vast plain added, ‘we must stop here, regather our courage and await the enemy on firm ground in close battalions without dividing our forces. Our 12,000 archers will range themselves in a circle around us to sustain as best they can the shock of the enemy."

Le Fevre and Waurin: "Then after the king of England had thus admonished his men, again on his little horse, he put himself in front of his banner and then marched with his whole battle in very good order towards the enemy. Then he called a rest in the place where he stopped...After the discussion had taken place between the two battles and the emissaries had returned to their own men, the king of England ordered a veteran knight, called Sir Thomas Erpingham, to draw up his archers and to put them in the front in two wings

While it would be ideal if the Gesta had echoed these deployments, it's clear that soon after the battle - on both sides of the conflict - it was thought that the English archers were only deployed forwards in wings after the initial battle. Years later, other authors who had been present at the battle wrote the same thing, diverging quite considerably from Monstrelet, whom they often don't differ from to such a degree.

Positioned as they were, the English were in a good defensive position if the French advanced to meet them, and their baggage was well protected behind their lines. However, they also needed to force a battle and couldn't afford a delay of more than a couple of hours. They were tired, wet, cold, hungry and likely diseased at this point, and time favoured only the French. Thus, when the negotiations had stalled and the English could see that the French were relaxed, with most of the cavalry gone off to exercise or feed their horses (c.f. the Berry Herald in particular), the English seized the opportunity to advance and risked an attack while they deployed in the hope that the French couldn't rally in time. As it turned out, this worked out well.

The English Offensive

The battle that followed was not too different in my view than Clifford J. Rogers' view, with the exception that the French cavalry probably attacked second, after an initial advance by the vanguard, but that's an argument for another day.

Bibliography

"Where Was the Battle of Agincourt Fought?" by Michael Livingstone, in Medieval Warfare Magazine IX.I

"The Battlefield" by Tim Sutherland, in The Battle of Agincourt ed. Anne Curry and Malcolm Mercer

The Battle of Agincourt: Sources and Interpretations, by Anne Curry

"The Battle of Agincourt" by Clifford J. Rogers, in The Hundred Years War (Part II) – Different Vistas ed. Andrew Villalon and Donald Kagay

Vegetius: Epitome of Military Sience, tr. N. P. Miller

Polybius: The Histories, tr. William Roger Patton

An arithmetical warlike treatise named Stratioticos, by Leonard Digges and Thomas Digges

The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, tr. Sumner Willard

[the-archlich]

The Hanzhong Campaign

One of the most storied campaigns of the Three Kingdoms era, the Hanzhong Campaign is also one of the ones most obscured by fictionalization and misrepresentation. It was the high point of Liu Bei’s career, and it ended with Shu at its maximal extent. Although the state would soon be reduced dramatically by the loss of Jing province, it would continue to hold Hanzhong until its conquest by Wei in 263.

The struggle for Hanzhong began in 217. Fa Zheng discussed matters with Liu Bei and noted that while Cao Cao subjugated Zhang Lu quickly (in 215), he didn't follow up on this momentum. Instead, he left Xiahou Yuan to defend the region and returned home. Fa Zheng believed that rather than this being evidence that Cao Cao's army lacked strength, it meant that Cao Cao was concerned elsewhere. On that assumption, Fa Zheng believed it would be possible to defeat Xiahou Yuan and claim Hanzhong, which would greatly strengthen Liu Bei's power. From there, they could slowly claim parts of Yong and Liang to expand, or at least hold a firm position in Hanzhong to preserve their state.[1] Previously, the official Huang Quan offered a similar suggestion.[2]

Two mystics named Zhou Qun and Zhang Yu predicted that the campaign would be, at most, halfway successful.[3] Liu Bei disregarded their warnings and accepted Fa Zheng's argument. Fa Zheng accompanied the army as Liu Bei's chief adviser.[4]

The army mobilized in 218, with Liu Bei sending two generals named Wu Lan and Lei Tong to capture Wudu. Liu Bei himself camped at Yangping with his main army.[5] Zhang Fei and Ma Chao were sent to support this force. In response, Cao Cao dispatched an army under Cao Hong to deal with them.[6] With Cao Hong were Cao Zhen[7] and Xin Pi,[8] with Cao Xiu serving as Cao Hong’s lead adviser. Zhang Fei camped at Gushan and made it known that he intended to cut off Cao Hong's army from the rear. However, Cao Xiu reasoned that if Zhang Fei was actually going to do that, he would advance in secret. He surmised that Zhang Fei's actions were a feint and that Wu Lan should be dealt with quickly. Cao Hong followed Cao Xiu's advice and attacked Wu Lan at Xiaban. Wu Lan was soundly defeated. Zhang Fei and Ma Chao retreated.[9] In the battle at Xiaban, Wu Lan’s general Ren Kai was killed. Wu Lan himself fled to the local tribes, where a leader called Qiangduan executed him. He then sent the head to Cao Cao as a token of submission. Zhang Fei and Ma Chao rejoined Liu Bei in Hanzhong.[10]

During the operations in Wudu, the battle in Hanzhong continued. Liu Bei and Xiahou Yuan fought repeatedly throughout the year.[11] One of the most important of these clashes was between Xu Huang and Liu Bei’s general Chen Shi. Chen Shi was dispatched with a large division to cut off Mamingge Road, but Xu Huang intercepted him and easily defeated him. Chen Shi’s soldiers were so thoroughly beaten that many attempted to escape by throwing themselves into the valleys, resulting in many deaths.[12] Another clash took place between Liu Bei and Zhang He, who was camped at Guangshi. Liu Bei attempted a night raid on Zhang He’s position, but Zhang He fended him off.[13]

Meanwhile, Cao Cao gathered a large army and slowly made his way towards Hanzhong. He began mobilizing in early autumn. By the end of the season, he reached Chang’an, where he halted.[14]

As the year turned, the campaign started to go in Liu Bei’s favor. He began by advancing from Yangping, across the Mian River, and taking up a position at Mount Dingjun. Xiahou Yuan brought his soldiers to nearby Zouma Valley to oppose him.[15] Zhang He appears to have joined him there. In the night, Liu Bei dispatched men to set fire to Xiahou Yuan’s camp. Xiahou Yuan sent Zhang He to defend the eastern side, while he personally commanded the southern defenses. Zhang He found himself struggling against Liu Bei’s attack, so Xiahou Yuan sent half of his soldiers to reinforce Zhang He, defending the south with a limited force.[16] Fa Zheng observed the army’s movements and determined that Liu Bei could strike a decisive blow against Xiahou Yuan.[17] Huang Zhong led the advance and struck Xiahou Yuan from the high ground. Xiahou Yuan was killed in the attack, along with one Zhao Yu, who Cao Cao had appointed as nominal Inspector of Yi.[18] Xiahou Yuan’s 13-year-old son Xiahou Rong was with him. He refused to abandon his father when the attack came and was also killed in battle.[19]

At that time, Xiahou Yuan’s major was Guo Huai. He was ill at the time of the battle, so he did not participate. As a result, he was not killed along with Xiahou Yuan. He collected the remnants of Xiahou Yuan’s army and led them to Zhang He, who became their commander.[20] Zhang He rallied the troops and set their defenses in order, soothing the panic that had set in at Xiahou Yuan’s death.[21]

Liu Bei sought to follow up on his victory the very next day by forcing a crossing of the Han river. The assorted generals wanted to meet Liu Bei at the river itself, but Guo Huai believed that would show their weakness and would not be sufficient to halt Liu Bei’s advance. Instead, he suggested taking a position some distance from the river so that Liu Bei would have to cross to fight them. They could then strike while the river divided his army. Zhang He followed this advice. Liu Bei observed the situation and, perceiving Guo Huai’s plan, did not advance.[22]

The situation remained at a stalemate for the next several months. Cao Cao sent Cao Zhen ahead of his main army to reinforce the defenders. He joined with Xu Huang, and together they defeated one of Liu Bei’s divisions under Gao Xiang.[23] Cao Cao himself mobilized in the third month of the year, marching from Chang’an to Xie valley, following the border of Hanzhong before entering it near Yangping. Rather than march forth to meet Cao Cao, Liu Bei simply maintained his defensive position.[24]

Appended to the SGZ biography of Fa Zheng is an account of his heroism in one particular skirmish. However, the source of this story is unclear so its authenticity cannot be verified. Accordingly: One of these defensive battles went poorly for Liu Bei. He found himself in a bad position and needed to retreat, but Liu Bei stubbornly refused to do so. His attendants dared not insist upon it even though their position was sustaining heavy fire from arrows. Fa Zheng came forward and stood in front of Liu Bei. Liu Bei warned him to avoid the arrows, and Fa Zheng responded by pointing out that Liu Bei himself wasn’t doing so. Liu Bei was thus persuaded to retreat.[25]

Another dubious account of the battles during this time comes from the Zhao Yun Biezhuan. The author of this work is unknown and it contains a number of factual errors and contradictions, so the accuracy of any given passage is subject to doubt. Nevertheless: Huang Zhong led a detachment to intercept a supply convoy bound for Cao Cao’s camp. Zhao Yun became concerned when Huang Zhong did not return when expected, so he took a small force to locate him. He soon came upon Cao Cao’s main army. Zhao Yun did battle with Cao Cao’s vanguard, who quickly received a large influx of reinforcements, forcing Zhao Yun to retreat. Though surrounded, Zhao Yun broke through the encirclement. However, his subordinate Zhang Zhu was injured and left behind, so Zhao Yun fought his way back through to rescue him. They then returned to Zhao Yun’s camp, pursued by Cao Cao’s main army. Realizing that he could not win such a battle, Zhao Yun attempted a deception. He ordered that the gates be opened, the flags be removed, and the drums quieted. When Cao Cao arrived at the camp, he suspected an ambush and retreated instead of attacking. As Cao Cao was retreating, Zhao Yun attacked, killing many of Cao Cao’s soldiers.[26]

The ZYBZ passage says that Zhao Yun’s camp was also defended by Zhang Yi 张翼 and incorrectly names him as the sheriff 长 of Mianyang 沔阳. Zhang Yi’s biography[27] says that he was made sheriff of Jiangyang around 219. 江阳. There can be no doubt that Mianyang is an error for Jiangyang.

Aside from these two suspect accounts, little is recorded of the fighting between Cao Cao and Liu Bei. During this time, Cao Cao sent Cao Zhen to Wudu, where he recalled Cao Hong and had him take up a fallback position at Chencang.[28] During the next two months, many soldiers defected from Cao Cao’s army. Ultimately, he was unable to dislodge Liu Bei and decided to retreat.[29] He began leading the army back to Chang’an in the fifth month of the year.[30]

Cao Cao worried that Liu Bei would join with the Di tribes in Wudu and threaten the west. His inspector of Yong, Zhang Ji, advised him to relocate the tribes of the region. He suggested encouraging the tribes to move north to help harvest that year’s crop, offering generous rewards to those who arrived first. Cao Cao approved of this plan and sent Zhang Ji to Wudu. He subsequently relocated fifty thousand people.[31] Around this time, Cao Cao sent Zhang He to join Cao Hong at Chencang, fortifying his defenses there.[32]

When Cao Cao initially took Hanzhong in 215, he made some rearrangements. The eastern counties of Anyang and Xicheng became a new commandery called Xicheng. Xi county became the new commandery of Shangyong.[33] At some time, Cao Cao also established the commandery of Fangling in the area.[34] After Liu Bei conquered Yi in 214, Fa Zheng’s friend Meng Da was made executor of Yidu, with his headquarters at Zigui.[35]

Following Cao Cao’s retreat from Hanzhong, Liu Bei sought to secure the eastern portion of the region. He sent Li Yan, Liu feng, and Meng Da to attack Shangyong.[36] Meng Da advanced north from Zigui and attacked Fangling, where he killed the local administrator Kuai Qi. Liu Bei worried that he couldn’t trust Meng Da, so he ordered Liu Feng to join him in attacking Shangyong. As the two armies converged on the city, the local administrator Shen Dan surrendered, sending his family to Liu Bei as hostages. Shen Dan was allowed to keep his position and his brother Shen Yi was made executor of Xicheng.[37]

With this, Liu Bei was in complete control of the entire Hanzhong region. The end of the campaign was followed with rewards and promotions all around, with Liu Bei himself taking the title King of Hanzhong. Shu was never more powerful than it was in that moment.

This success was short-lived. Only months later, Guan Yu would begin a disastrous campaign that would end with Shu losing control of Jing province entirely. Efforts to retake portions of Jing in 221 and 222 were unsuccessful, and Shu would never again hold territory beyond the traditional borders of Yi province. In 220, Meng Da would defect to Wei, taking eastern Hanzhong with him. The western half of the region, however, would remain in Shu’s hands for the rest of its existence, serving as a defensive bulwark that would turn back Wei in 230 and 244. On those occasions, the state owed its existence to the success of this campaign.

1.  SGZ 37.2 2.  SGZ 43.1 3.  SGZ 42.2 4.  SGZ 37.2 5.  SGZ 32 6.  SGZ 1 7.  SGZ 9.6 8.  SGZ 25.1 9.  SGZ 9.5 10.  SGZ 1 11.  SGZ 9.2 12.  SGZ 17.5 13.  SGZ 17.4 14.  SGZ 1 15.  SGZ 32 16.  SGZ 9.2 17.  SGZ 37.2 18.  SGZ 32 19.  Wèi Jìn Shìyù 魏晋世语; SGZ 9.2 20.  SGZ 26.4 21.  SGZ 17.4 22.  SGZ 26.4 23.  SGZ 9.6 24.  SGZ 1 25.  Pei Songzhi; SGZ 37.2 26.  Zhào Yún Biézhuàn 赵云别传; SGZ 36.5 27.  SGZ 45.2 28.  SGZ 9.6 29.  SGZ 32 30.  SGZ 1 31.  SGZ 15.4 32.  SGZ 17.4 33.  SGZ 1 34.  SGZ 40.1, where it is referred to as such. 35.  SGZ 40.1 36.  SGZ 32 37.  SGZ 40.1

[socialjusticeartshare]

All migrant children must be released from US detention by Friday because of coronavirus. Some parents fear that could mean separation

WASHINGTON ― She lost her first child while pregnant in her native Haiti when armed men raped and beat her for speaking out against the country’s human rights abuses.

She thought she would find safety in Santiago, Chile, where she fled to join her husband. But their second child barely survived after she was forced to give birth to him on a city street when hospital workers denied her medical care because she is Haitian.

The racism and violence sent them fleeing to the United States, but they’re still not safe. The couple is fighting deportation from inside a Pennsylvania detention center, and now a judge’s ruling and the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration approach is forcing the couple and dozens of other immigrants to make a cruel choice.

A federal judge has ordered the release of immigrant children in the nation’s three family detention centers by Friday because of the coronavirus outbreak and possible violations of public health practices at the facilities. But immigration officials aren’t expected to allow their parents to leave with them.

So the parents must decide: abandon their asylum claims and face imminent deportation with their children to countries where their lives are in danger or allow their children to be released to a sponsor or relative here and risk separation if the parents are later deported.

“The thought of being separated from my child is literally killing me,” the woman said, her voice shaking with emotion on a phone call from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Berks County Family Residential Center this week. She asked that her name be withheld out of concern for her safety.

Immigrant rights advocates and lawyers who initially rejoiced when the federal judge’s ruling came down last month are trying to figure out what will happen Friday for parents still waging legal battles against deportation.

“There is no real option for them that they could choose that would be a safe choice for their children — none,” said Bridget Cambria, director of ALDEA — The People’s Justice Center and part of a coalition working to ensure families are released and kept united.

ICE officials on Tuesday declined to comment, citing pending litigation over the release of families in detention.

Federal officials and immigrant rights lawyers have been locked in legal battles over the fate of immigrants and their children since the pandemic began to tear across the world in March. As the Trump administration shut down borders and restricted foreign travelers, it moved slowly to release people from detention centers and close immigration courts, sparking concerns the centers and courtrooms were petri dishes for infection.

On June 26, US District Judge Dolly M. Gee of California ordered federal officials to remove all of the children from the three family detention facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania with “all deliberate speed.” She pointed to findings from an independent monitor and a Stanford University pediatrics professor who examined conditions at the family detention centers and observed “non-compliance or spotty compliance with masking and social distancing rules.”

At the time of her ruling, 11 people detained at the facility in Karnes County, Texas, and four employees at another family detention center in the nearby city of Dilley had tested positive for COVID-19. Although no cases had been reported at Berks, Gee wrote, six children had been infected in April with viral stomatitis, an inflation of the mouth, “further demonstrating the ease with which contagion can spread in congregate settings.”

The family detention centers “are ‘on fire’ and there is no more time for half measures,” she said, giving immigration officials until Friday to release the children.

On Monday, immigrant rights lawyers in a separate Washington, D.C., case asked a federal judge to order the release of all parents in the family detention centers. In all, at the time, there were more than 300 adults and children who remained locked up, including a third who are under 10 years old.

A complaint filed by Proyecto Dilley, the People’s Justice Center, RAICES, and other immigration legal groups over the weekend detailed medical care that has “been substandard at best, and negligent at worst.” And the lawyers cited concerns parents would be separated from their children. Families had already been locked up for more than 180 days, though none had criminal charges.

Vanessa Molina, with the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, on Monday advised the judge against the “wholesale release” of detainees, saying government officials have met all court orders and are following federal public health guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A ruling is not expected until early next week.

In Pennsylvania, activists have called on Governor Tom Wolf to close the Berks detention center, where 16 people remained as of Monday and more arrived on Wednesday.

The Haitian couple entered the United States in March at the Mexican border and turned themselves in to Border Patrol officials. But a federal judge denied the family the chance to plead for asylum under the Trump administration’s transit ban, which prevented thousands of migrants from applying for asylum unless they first sought and were denied refuge in another country on their route. Another federal judge this month struck down that policy.

“We are in this real stalemate because ICE has stopped using their discretion to release families who have been detained for a long time,” Cambria said. “I have a tough time understanding who gets released or when. It is very indiscriminate.”

The couple said they arrived at Berks after a six-day, cross-country journey through different detention centers, during which they had no access to lawyers or basic hygiene necessities, such as showers or toothbrushes.

Their son, who turns 2 next month, had diarrhea and vomited several times along the way, his mother said. Now they’re worried they could all contract the coronavirus while stuck in immigration limbo, the parents said.

Another immigrant father at Berks — also from Haiti — described a similar harrowing transfer with his wife and two children, ages 11 and 3. That man, a former Red Cross worker who asked that his name be withheld out of fear of retaliation from US officials, said he and his family only get to spend a few hours together a day and that the conditions are taking their toll.

They have lost weight and often struggle with frigid temperatures at the facility. His children have suffered from a virus that leaves blisters on their tongues and lips and prevents them from eating, he said. He fears the coronavirus but a possible separation even more, he said.

“I feel like extreme pain because they are asking me, they are asking us to give up our kids or [all] stay in prison,” he said on the phone from the Berks facility this week.

Immigration lawyers and activists have fought child detention for decades. A 1997 case established minimum federal standards for holding children and has been interpreted as limiting the time a child can be held in immigration detention to 20 days.

But under President Trump, federal officials have separated families at the southwestern border, sought to allow the indefinite detention of children, and narrowed the path to asylum to deter families from immigrating to the United States.

As the pandemic has allowed Trump to ramp up his immigration crackdown, the Black Lives Matter protests have cast new attention on those hardest hit by the policies: Black immigrants from Caribbean and African nations who lawyers say are often detained for longer under higher bonds. More than 140 Haitian asylum-seekers, including more than 20 children, were deported after Gee ordered all children released, lawyers said.

“One of the things that is clear is that the fight for Black lives is a universal fight,” said Guerline Jozef, cofounder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a coalition of Haitian activists and organizers in California dedicated to helping Haitian immigrants navigate life in the United States.

The former Red Cross worker fears deportation to Haiti, where he said he was attacked by a rival political group in 2015 and barely escaped alive. He had hoped to find a better life in Santiago, where he met his wife ― a neighbor with smarts and a beautiful smile — but protests against Haitian immigrants increased there, as did assaults.

The Haitian woman and her husband had been law students and activists speaking out in favor of women’s and students’ rights in their homeland. He was forced to flee to Chile first after he was shot at and beaten, he said. She continued her activism until members of a government-backed gang attacked, raped, and sodomized her, she said.

The gang killed her parents not long after.

In Santiago, her husband helped deliver her baby on the street. He tied the umbilical cord with his shoelaces and wrapped him in his jacket, as they searched for a hospital that would take them in.

“I am extremely traumatized by what happened in Haiti,” she said. “To have to experience the trauma and abuse again because of being Black in Chile and now to be put in prison where the is no hope, I feel like I am losing my mind. I cannot [go on] anymore. Please help.”

Article Source

[newstfionline]

The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why.

By Rod Nordland, NY Times, Sept. 21, 2018

PUL-I-KUMRI, Afghanistan--Taliban insurgents killed so many Afghan security forces in 2016, an average of 22 a day, that by the following year the Afghan and American governments decided to keep battlefield death tolls secret.

It’s much worse now. The daily fatalities among Afghan soldiers and policemen were more than double that last week: roughly 57 a day.

Seventeen years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining momentum, seizing territory, and killing Afghan security forces in record numbers.

Last week was especially bad, with more than 400 killed, according to an account by diplomats. But even the average numbers in recent months--from 30 to 40 a day, according to senior Afghan officials--represent a substantial upswing from two years ago and appear unsustainable in a country that has been shattered by decades of war.

The growing losses have made recruiting fresh soldiers more important than ever, but also harder than ever. Most days at the Afghan Army’s recruitment center in Helmand, the southern province that has seen the war’s worst fighting, there are only two or three applicants, said Abdul Qudous, the center’s head.

“Sometimes we don’t see any recruits for weeks,” he said. “People don’t want to join the army any more because the casualties are too high.”

This is not just a matter of lives lost, which reverberate through families already traumatized by decades of war. It is also a sign that the stalemate between the Taliban and government forces is tipping in the insurgents’ favor. Throughout this year, the Taliban have owned the initiative against government forces who have been spread thin and rooted to the defensive. The security forces have repeatedly had to call on the small American contingent here--and its considerable air power--to rescue them from trouble.

In a war of attrition, the momentum is all with the Taliban, who seem to have no trouble replenishing their forces.

As government forces fall, the Taliban’s battlefield victories have lowered morale and faith in the government, and made prospects of a peace deal even more remote.

After 17 years of war in Afghanistan, military and social progress are worse than American officials have admitted.

“The Taliban don’t want peace, because they think they can win the war,” said the embattled governor of Baghlan Province, Abdul Hai Nimati, at his office here in Pul-i-Kumri. “If it goes on like this, they’re going to win.”

Appointed by President Ashraf Ghani, Mr. Nimati is a former jihadi commander who fought the Soviets and the Communist government during the 1980s and 1990s. “Back in those days, we had all the advantages of fighting a guerrilla war that the Taliban have now,” he said, almost wistfully. “We have to defend everywhere, and they can attack anywhere.”

The figure of 400 Afghan soldiers and police officers killed last week leaked out of a meeting last weekend between Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander, and Western diplomats in Kabul, according to two of those present, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was meant to be off the record.

Asked about the meeting, the American military spokesman, Col. Dave Butler, did not specifically address the number killed last week, instead saying, “General Miller’s remarks are not accurately reflected by your sources’ recollection.” He added: “He was reflecting on Afghan sacrifice over a several-week period. He was relaying a sense of urgency to the team and encouraging focus on the mission.”

The quiet acknowledgment of higher casualties is coming at a time of alarm about the Taliban’s gains across Afghanistan. More districts than at any time since 2001--including some provincial capitals--have fallen under threat or outright control by the insurgents over the past year.

The casualties have undermined morale among the Afghan police and military, whatever the actual numbers.

“Yesterday five people were killed and four wounded from our battalion, and no one helped them,” Pvt. Ahmad Javed, 23, whose unit is stationed in Baghlan Province, said Monday. “We never get reinforcements in time when the Taliban attack us, and our dead just lay on the scene. Because of that we lose our morale.”

When the Afghan National Army stopped disclosing data on battlefield losses, it also started withholding information on the attrition rate and recruitment. By early 2017, the army was already losing 2.9 percent of its forces monthly to attrition--which includes losses from casualties, desertions and failure to re-enlist. That meant more than a third of its force had to be replaced with new recruits each year.

With civilian work scarce and army jobs relatively well paying, the Afghan security forces previously were able to recruit 100,000 or more men annually. That is apparently no longer the case.

As of April, there were officially 314,000 members of the Afghan security forces, police and army--well short of their authorized strength of 352,000. The actual number of security force members is thought to be even less because of fraudulent reporting and unreported desertions.

Col. Mujtaba Khan Sadat, the head of recruitment in Badakhshan Province, said daily recruits there had dropped in recent months to from 15 to 20, half what they were a year before.

“Because of the increasing level of insecurity and high level of casualties, people are not joining the army as much,” he said. “Most of the young people are going to Turkey to find jobs instead.”

Although government officials have refused to divulge their own casualty figures, they readily provide numbers for Taliban militants they say they have killed. In August, according to official government reports, their forces claimed to kill 42 Taliban militants a day, 1,300 a month. In the year that ended in March, 13,600 insurgents were killed, said Najib Danish, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs. There was no independent confirmation of such figures.

Last week’s death toll, the highest known toll of any week in the war so far, arrived without any single spectacular attack but was instead made up of numerous smaller attacks in at least 15 provinces and 23 districts, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Times reporters interviewed officials in every province where there were known military operations from Sept. 7 to 14, and according to those officials, a total of 193 government soldiers and police officers were killed in those 23 districts, less than half of the real total.

But official Afghan government policy forbids representatives for provincial and district police and government bodies from divulging casualty details to the news media, so many simply refuse to do so; that most likely accounts for the much higher figure the American military cited last week. The spokesman for one provincial police chief said his boss had recently ordered him to “only give information about our successes, not our failures.”

The Taliban have so far failed to accomplish their publicly stated goals of taking and holding cities and capturing entire provinces. But some provincial officials have expressed concern that could still happen this year, in Farah, Oruzgan or even here in Baghlan Province.

In Baghlan, Governor Nimati said: “There is a risk that even this province will collapse if we don’t get support. Until now, we have no reserve. Every man we have is fighting without any rest for 10 days now, and getting no sleep, and they’re tired.”

[blogparadiseisland]

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why.

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why. Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why. http://www.nature-business.com/nature-the-death-toll-for-afghan-forces-is-secret-heres-why/

Nature

Image

A member of the Afghan National Army training with United States Army soldiers in Helmand Province in 2016. The Afghan government keeps casualty rates among its security forces a secret, along with information on attrition and recruitment.CreditCreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

PUL-I-KUMRI, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents killed so many Afghan security forces in 2016, an average of 22 a day, that by the following year the Afghan and American governments decided to keep battlefield death tolls secret.

It’s much worse now. The daily fatalities among Afghan soldiers and policemen were more than double that last week: roughly 57 a day.

Seventeen years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining momentum, seizing territory, and killing Afghan security forces in record numbers.

Last week was especially bad, with more than 400 killed, according to an account by diplomats. But even the average numbers in recent months — from 30 to 40 a day, according to senior Afghan officials — represent a substantial upswing from two years ago and appear unsustainable in a country that has been shattered by decades of war.

Image

Relatives mourning in Baghlan Province last month next to the coffins of police officers who were killed in a Taliban attack.CreditReuters

The growing losses have made recruiting fresh soldiers more important than ever, but also harder than ever. Most days at the Afghan Army’s recruitment center in Helmand, the southern province that has seen the war’s worst fighting, there are only two or three applicants, said Abdul Qudous, the center’s head.

“Sometimes we don’t see any recruits for weeks,” he said. “People don’t want to join the army any more because the casualties are too high.”

This is not just a matter of lives lost, which reverberate through families already traumatized by decades of war. It is also a sign that the stalemate between the Taliban and government forces is tipping in the insurgents’ favor. Throughout this year, the Taliban have owned the initiative against government forces who have been spread thin and rooted to the defensive. The security forces have repeatedly had to call on the small American contingent here — and its considerable air power — to rescue them from trouble.

In a war of attrition, the momentum is all with the Taliban, who seem to have no trouble replenishing their forces.

As government forces fall, the Taliban’s battlefield victories have lowered morale and faith in the government, and made prospects of a peace deal even more remote.

“The Taliban don’t want peace, because they think they can win the war,” said the embattled governor of Baghlan Province, Abdul Hai Nimati, at his office here in Pul-i-Kumri. “If it goes on like this, they’re going to win.”

Appointed by President Ashraf Ghani, Mr. Nimati is a former jihadi commander who fought the Soviets and the Communist government during the 1980s and 1990s. “Back in those days, we had all the advantages of fighting a guerrilla war that the Taliban have now,” he said, almost wistfully. “We have to defend everywhere, and they can attack anywhere.”

The figure of 400 Afghan soldiers and police officers killed last week leaked out of a meeting last weekend between Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander, and Western diplomats in Kabul, according to two of those present, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was meant to be off the record.

Asked about the meeting, the American military spokesman, Col. Dave Butler, did not specifically address the number killed last week, instead saying, “General Miller’s remarks are not accurately reflected by your sources’ recollection.” He added: “He was reflecting on Afghan sacrifice over a several-week period. He was relaying a sense of urgency to the team and encouraging focus on the mission.”

The quiet acknowledgment of higher casualties is coming at a time of alarm about the Taliban’s gains across Afghanistan. More districts than at any time since 2001 — including some provincial capitals — have fallen under threat or outright control by the insurgents over the past year.

Image

Afghan Taliban militants in Jalalabad celebrating a cease-fire in June for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.CreditNoorullah Shirzada/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The casualties have undermined morale among the Afghan police and military, whatever the actual numbers.

“Yesterday five people were killed and four wounded from our battalion, and no one helped them,” Pvt. Ahmad Javed, 23, whose unit is stationed in Baghlan Province, said Monday. “We never get reinforcements in time when the Taliban attack us, and our dead just lay on the scene. Because of that we lose our morale.”

When the Afghan National Army stopped disclosing data on battlefield losses, it also started withholding information on the attrition rate and recruitment. By early 2017, the army was already losing 2.9 percent of its forces monthly to attrition — which includes losses from casualties, desertions and failure to re-enlist. That meant more than a third of its force had to be replaced with new recruits each year.

With civilian work scarce and army jobs relatively well paying, the Afghan security forces previously were able to recruit 100,000 or more men annually. That is apparently no longer the case.

As of April, there were officially 314,000 members of the Afghan security forces, police and army — well short of their authorized strength of 352,000. The actual number of security force members is thought to be even less because of fraudulent reporting and unreported desertions.

Image

Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander in Afghanistan, in Kabul this month. At a meeting with Western diplomats, he said 400 members of the Afghan government security forces had been killed last week alone.CreditMohammad Ismail/Reuters

Col. Mujtaba Khan Sadat, the head of recruitment in Badakhshan Province, said daily recruits there had dropped in recent months to from 15 to 20, half what they were a year before.

“Because of the increasing level of insecurity and high level of casualties, people are not joining the army as much,” he said. “Most of the young people are going to Turkey to find jobs instead.”

Although government officials have refused to divulge their own casualty figures, they readily provide numbers for Taliban militants they say they have killed. In August, according to official government reports, their forces claimed to kill 42 Taliban militants a day, 1,300 a month. In the year that ended in March, 13,600 insurgents were killed, said Najib Danish, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs. There was no independent confirmation of such figures.

[Read about how the American government misleads the public on Afghan war data.]

General Miller took over command of the American-led coalition in the aftermath of a particularly difficult month for Afghan forces. Taliban insurgents had recently overrun most of the strategic city of Ghazni for six days, until American Special Operations forces and air power helped wrest it back. The same week, three major military bases fell to the insurgents.

Known fatalities that week in August were fewer than 300, according to interviews with civilian and security officials at the local, district and provincial levels.

Image

Members of the Afghan National Police reviewing applications in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, in March 2016.CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

Last week’s death toll, the highest known toll of any week in the war so far, arrived without any single spectacular attack but was instead made up of numerous smaller attacks in at least 15 provinces and 23 districts, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Times reporters interviewed officials in every province where there were known military operations from Sept. 7 to 14, and according to those officials, a total of 193 government soldiers and police officers were killed in those 23 districts, less than half of the real total.

But official Afghan government policy forbids representatives for provincial and district police and government bodies from divulging casualty details to the news media, so many simply refuse to do so; that most likely accounts for the much higher figure the American military cited last week. The spokesman for one provincial police chief said his boss had recently ordered him to “only give information about our successes, not our failures.”

Afghan military casualties have been rising steadily since the international coalition began handing over responsibility for most security to the Afghans in preparation for the formal end of the American combat mission in 2014. About 14,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan.

The American military has encouraged the Afghans to shift from a largely checkpoint army — guarding facilities, roads and bases throughout the country — to one that concentrates some of its forces on guarding population centers, and the rest on offensive operations.

Image

The aftermath of an airstrike by an Afghan military helicopter during clashes between Afghan security forces and militants in Kabul last month.CreditWakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Throughout the height of this summer’s fighting season, however, the Afghan forces have remained largely defensive, with most offensive operations being conducted by the Taliban, military analysts here say. That has allowed the Taliban to mass large numbers of fighters against isolated outposts and bases, often with devastating results.

[Read about the Afghan Army’s last stand at Chinese Camp, where a whole company was lost.]

After last week’s debacle, Afghan officials said they had decided to go on the offensive. According to Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed, the new spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, “We have started on the offensive from Sept. 13.”

Governor Nimati said that disaster in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district was averted last week only after the American military sent Special Forces troops to fight alongside Afghan commandos, backed up by airstrikes. But as soon as the Americans and the commandos left, he said, Taliban forces immediately began filtering back in, and by the weekend the bases in the district were again in Taliban hands.

The Taliban have so far failed to accomplish their publicly stated goals of taking and holding cities and capturing entire provinces. But some provincial officials have expressed concern that could still happen this year, in Farah, Oruzgan or even here in Baghlan Province.

In Baghlan, Governor Nimati said: “There is a risk that even this province will collapse if we don’t get support. Until now, we have no reserve. Every man we have is fighting without any rest for 10 days now, and getting no sleep, and they’re tired.”

Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter: @rodnordland.

Reporting was contributed by Mujib Mashal, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi from Kabul; Najim Rahim from Pul-i-Kumri; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar; Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost; Mohammad Saber from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad; and an employee of The New York Times in Ghazni.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

1

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Why Death Toll In Afghanistan Is Kept a Secret

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/world/asia/afghanistan-security-casualties-taliban.html |

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why., in 2018-09-22 11:45:27

[blogwonderwebsites]

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why.

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why. Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why. http://www.nature-business.com/nature-the-death-toll-for-afghan-forces-is-secret-heres-why/

Nature

Image

A member of the Afghan National Army training with United States Army soldiers in Helmand Province in 2016. The Afghan government keeps casualty rates among its security forces a secret, along with information on attrition and recruitment.CreditCreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

PUL-I-KUMRI, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents killed so many Afghan security forces in 2016, an average of 22 a day, that by the following year the Afghan and American governments decided to keep battlefield death tolls secret.

It’s much worse now. The daily fatalities among Afghan soldiers and policemen were more than double that last week: roughly 57 a day.

Seventeen years after the United States went to war in Afghanistan, the Taliban is gaining momentum, seizing territory, and killing Afghan security forces in record numbers.

Last week was especially bad, with more than 400 killed, according to an account by diplomats. But even the average numbers in recent months — from 30 to 40 a day, according to senior Afghan officials — represent a substantial upswing from two years ago and appear unsustainable in a country that has been shattered by decades of war.

Image

Relatives mourning in Baghlan Province last month next to the coffins of police officers who were killed in a Taliban attack.CreditReuters

The growing losses have made recruiting fresh soldiers more important than ever, but also harder than ever. Most days at the Afghan Army’s recruitment center in Helmand, the southern province that has seen the war’s worst fighting, there are only two or three applicants, said Abdul Qudous, the center’s head.

“Sometimes we don’t see any recruits for weeks,” he said. “People don’t want to join the army any more because the casualties are too high.”

This is not just a matter of lives lost, which reverberate through families already traumatized by decades of war. It is also a sign that the stalemate between the Taliban and government forces is tipping in the insurgents’ favor. Throughout this year, the Taliban have owned the initiative against government forces who have been spread thin and rooted to the defensive. The security forces have repeatedly had to call on the small American contingent here — and its considerable air power — to rescue them from trouble.

In a war of attrition, the momentum is all with the Taliban, who seem to have no trouble replenishing their forces.

As government forces fall, the Taliban’s battlefield victories have lowered morale and faith in the government, and made prospects of a peace deal even more remote.

“The Taliban don’t want peace, because they think they can win the war,” said the embattled governor of Baghlan Province, Abdul Hai Nimati, at his office here in Pul-i-Kumri. “If it goes on like this, they’re going to win.”

Appointed by President Ashraf Ghani, Mr. Nimati is a former jihadi commander who fought the Soviets and the Communist government during the 1980s and 1990s. “Back in those days, we had all the advantages of fighting a guerrilla war that the Taliban have now,” he said, almost wistfully. “We have to defend everywhere, and they can attack anywhere.”

The figure of 400 Afghan soldiers and police officers killed last week leaked out of a meeting last weekend between Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander, and Western diplomats in Kabul, according to two of those present, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was meant to be off the record.

Asked about the meeting, the American military spokesman, Col. Dave Butler, did not specifically address the number killed last week, instead saying, “General Miller’s remarks are not accurately reflected by your sources’ recollection.” He added: “He was reflecting on Afghan sacrifice over a several-week period. He was relaying a sense of urgency to the team and encouraging focus on the mission.”

The quiet acknowledgment of higher casualties is coming at a time of alarm about the Taliban’s gains across Afghanistan. More districts than at any time since 2001 — including some provincial capitals — have fallen under threat or outright control by the insurgents over the past year.

Image

Afghan Taliban militants in Jalalabad celebrating a cease-fire in June for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.CreditNoorullah Shirzada/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The casualties have undermined morale among the Afghan police and military, whatever the actual numbers.

“Yesterday five people were killed and four wounded from our battalion, and no one helped them,” Pvt. Ahmad Javed, 23, whose unit is stationed in Baghlan Province, said Monday. “We never get reinforcements in time when the Taliban attack us, and our dead just lay on the scene. Because of that we lose our morale.”

When the Afghan National Army stopped disclosing data on battlefield losses, it also started withholding information on the attrition rate and recruitment. By early 2017, the army was already losing 2.9 percent of its forces monthly to attrition — which includes losses from casualties, desertions and failure to re-enlist. That meant more than a third of its force had to be replaced with new recruits each year.

With civilian work scarce and army jobs relatively well paying, the Afghan security forces previously were able to recruit 100,000 or more men annually. That is apparently no longer the case.

As of April, there were officially 314,000 members of the Afghan security forces, police and army — well short of their authorized strength of 352,000. The actual number of security force members is thought to be even less because of fraudulent reporting and unreported desertions.

Image

Gen. Austin Scott Miller, the new American military commander in Afghanistan, in Kabul this month. At a meeting with Western diplomats, he said 400 members of the Afghan government security forces had been killed last week alone.CreditMohammad Ismail/Reuters

Col. Mujtaba Khan Sadat, the head of recruitment in Badakhshan Province, said daily recruits there had dropped in recent months to from 15 to 20, half what they were a year before.

“Because of the increasing level of insecurity and high level of casualties, people are not joining the army as much,” he said. “Most of the young people are going to Turkey to find jobs instead.”

Although government officials have refused to divulge their own casualty figures, they readily provide numbers for Taliban militants they say they have killed. In August, according to official government reports, their forces claimed to kill 42 Taliban militants a day, 1,300 a month. In the year that ended in March, 13,600 insurgents were killed, said Najib Danish, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior Affairs. There was no independent confirmation of such figures.

[Read about how the American government misleads the public on Afghan war data.]

General Miller took over command of the American-led coalition in the aftermath of a particularly difficult month for Afghan forces. Taliban insurgents had recently overrun most of the strategic city of Ghazni for six days, until American Special Operations forces and air power helped wrest it back. The same week, three major military bases fell to the insurgents.

Known fatalities that week in August were fewer than 300, according to interviews with civilian and security officials at the local, district and provincial levels.

Image

Members of the Afghan National Police reviewing applications in Lashkar Gah, Helmand Province, in March 2016.CreditAdam Ferguson for The New York Times

Last week’s death toll, the highest known toll of any week in the war so far, arrived without any single spectacular attack but was instead made up of numerous smaller attacks in at least 15 provinces and 23 districts, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Times reporters interviewed officials in every province where there were known military operations from Sept. 7 to 14, and according to those officials, a total of 193 government soldiers and police officers were killed in those 23 districts, less than half of the real total.

But official Afghan government policy forbids representatives for provincial and district police and government bodies from divulging casualty details to the news media, so many simply refuse to do so; that most likely accounts for the much higher figure the American military cited last week. The spokesman for one provincial police chief said his boss had recently ordered him to “only give information about our successes, not our failures.”

Afghan military casualties have been rising steadily since the international coalition began handing over responsibility for most security to the Afghans in preparation for the formal end of the American combat mission in 2014. About 14,000 American troops remain in Afghanistan.

The American military has encouraged the Afghans to shift from a largely checkpoint army — guarding facilities, roads and bases throughout the country — to one that concentrates some of its forces on guarding population centers, and the rest on offensive operations.

Image

The aftermath of an airstrike by an Afghan military helicopter during clashes between Afghan security forces and militants in Kabul last month.CreditWakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Throughout the height of this summer’s fighting season, however, the Afghan forces have remained largely defensive, with most offensive operations being conducted by the Taliban, military analysts here say. That has allowed the Taliban to mass large numbers of fighters against isolated outposts and bases, often with devastating results.

[Read about the Afghan Army’s last stand at Chinese Camp, where a whole company was lost.]

After last week’s debacle, Afghan officials said they had decided to go on the offensive. According to Ghafoor Ahmad Jawed, the new spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, “We have started on the offensive from Sept. 13.”

Governor Nimati said that disaster in the Baghlan-e-Markazi district was averted last week only after the American military sent Special Forces troops to fight alongside Afghan commandos, backed up by airstrikes. But as soon as the Americans and the commandos left, he said, Taliban forces immediately began filtering back in, and by the weekend the bases in the district were again in Taliban hands.

The Taliban have so far failed to accomplish their publicly stated goals of taking and holding cities and capturing entire provinces. But some provincial officials have expressed concern that could still happen this year, in Farah, Oruzgan or even here in Baghlan Province.

In Baghlan, Governor Nimati said: “There is a risk that even this province will collapse if we don’t get support. Until now, we have no reserve. Every man we have is fighting without any rest for 10 days now, and getting no sleep, and they’re tired.”

Follow Rod Nordland on Twitter: @rodnordland.

Reporting was contributed by Mujib Mashal, Fahim Abed and Fatima Faizi from Kabul; Najim Rahim from Pul-i-Kumri; Taimoor Shah from Kandahar; Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost; Mohammad Saber from Herat; Zabihullah Ghazi from Jalalabad; and an employee of The New York Times in Ghazni.

A version of this article appears in print on

, on Page

A

1

of the New York edition

with the headline:

Why Death Toll In Afghanistan Is Kept a Secret

. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/world/asia/afghanistan-security-casualties-taliban.html |

Nature The Death Toll for Afghan Forces Is Secret. Here’s Why., in 2018-09-22 11:45:27

[newstfionline]

Afghanistan’s bloody week shows how U.S. policy there is failing

By Amanda Erickson, Washington Post, Jan. 29, 2018

On Saturday, a suicide bomber packed a fake ambulance with explosives, drove to a hospital in central Kabul and set off an explosion that rocked the Afghan capital. At least 103 people were killed and 235 wounded. The attack, claimed by the Taliban, was one of the deadliest in the country’s history.

It was also the third major attack in Afghanistan in a week. Last Monday, 22 people died when Taliban fighters stormed the Intercontinental, a tightly guarded luxury hotel in Kabul, and sparked a firefight that lasted more than 14 hours. Just days later, an assault by the Islamic State on the Jalalabad office of British charity Save the Children left at least four people dead. The organization has since suspended all operations in the country.

And that wasn’t all. On Monday morning came yet another attack, this time on an Afghan army base near Kabul. The BBC reported that at least two soldiers were killed.

The relentless violence underscores the frustrating reality in Afghanistan: Despite more than 16 years of fighting by the U.S.-led coalition and Afghan security forces, the Taliban and other terrorist groups are again growing stronger.

In the years since they toppled the Taliban in 2001, U.S. and Afghan forces have struggled to dismantle the terrorist group’s networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today, the Taliban controls about a third of Afghanistan, more territory than at any point since the U.S. invasion; it has gained a foothold in areas like Babaji and Marjah that coalition troops fought hard to defend; and it has launched high-profile attacks in major cities, creating a sense among Afghans that no one is safe.

As Krishnadev Calamur wrote for the Atlantic, “the group’s resilience and the apparent ease with which it continues to strike at the heart of the Afghan state underscores the challenge its government faces in bringing stability to the country, even as U.S. military support is set to increase under President Donald Trump.”

Meanwhile, that government is fragile and fractured. President Ashraf Ghani presides over a coalition plagued by rivalries and in-fighting. Corruption is rampant. One poll, from July 2017, found 61 percent of Afghans believe the country is moving in the wrong direction.

So it’s perhaps no surprise that other terrorist groups have gotten a foothold in Afghanistan as well. The Islamic State has launched several attacks on foreigners and Afghanistan’s Shiite minority. The group took credit for at least 15 bombings in Afghanistan in 2017, up from just a couple in 2016. “ISIS has lost land, but has not surrendered its arms, and is looking for land in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia to, in this way, revive the idea of the Islamic caliphate,” said Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi to Tehran’s Seminar on Terrorism, Extremism and Regional Security in West Asia in December.

U.S. policymakers are not blind to this problem. Since taking office, President Trump has increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan from 8,500 to 14,000--and, as my colleagues reported last week, the U.S. Army is preparing to send up to 1,000 more. Those soldiers would be sent to smaller commands in some of the most violent and remote parts of the country, Pentagon sources said, putting them far closer to the fighting than is currently the case.

But those new troops will likely have little impact on the security situation. Afghanistan’s own security forces are weak and understaffed--some 10,000 of them died in fighting over the last year. Meanwhile, daily life has become nearly impossible for large swaths of the country. Unemployment is chronic, basic services are in disrepair and least 10 civilians died each day in 2017 as a result of fighting. Aid groups are pulling out or significantly shrinking their operations.

As Michèle Flournoy, a top Pentagon official during the Obama administration, put it to the New York Times: “The 3,000 to 5,000 may prevent a near-term backsliding, but it is not going to be decisive in turning the tide of this war. The administration needs to accompany any troop increase with a new political and economic strategy to help the Afghans achieve greater stability.”

The very announcement of an expanded U.S. presence in Afghanistan resulted in an uptick in violence. In a statement after Saturday’s attack, Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid drew a direct link between the increase in U.S. troop levels and the hospital bombing, calling it “a clear message for Trump and his hand kissers that if you go ahead with a policy of aggression and speak from the barrel of a gun, don’t expect Afghans to grow flowers in response.”

Despite all that, no one expects the Taliban to fully retake Afghanistan. As journalist Seth G. Jones wrote in Foreign Affairs, the group’s ideology is too extreme for most Afghans, and its reliance on brutal tactics has made it unpopular in the country and overdependent on foreign allies. One national poll found just four percent of Afghan voters hoped to see the Taliban return to power.

“The weaknesses of both the Taliban and the current Afghan government suggest that a stalemate is the most likely outcome for the foreseeable future,” he argued. “Territory may change hands, although probably not enough to tip the balance in favor of either side.” Nor will that stem the violence. As Jones wrote, “the group has the ability to continue waging an insurgency for the foreseeable future.”

U.S. officials seem to be paying little attention to such warnings. Shortly after Saturday’s bombing, Trump reiterated his “resolve” to see the struggle through, saying “the United States is committed to a secure Afghanistan that is free from terrorists.” Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Central Command, told reporters just hours after the attack that victory is “absolutely” still possible in the country.

But their confidence can’t quite obscure the obvious: The president and his generals still can’t offer any real sense of what a win in Afghanistan might look like or how we might get there. And, as ever, Afghans are futilely waiting for American leaders to figure out the answers.