This is an important factor that I don't think is getting quite enough reportage...or it's just starting to get the proper level of reportage. Afghanistan offers several challenges that the more urban Iraq did not. Terrain, history, culture, all are deeply confounding. And in considering those, we aren't even considering it how its geopolitical positioning combined with its rural makeup means the whole place is essentially a lawless borderland surrounded by other lawless borderlands in the jurisdictions of competitive neighbors.
On-the-ground spying means making contacts, reading papers, listening to conversations...it's social networking to the Nth degree. That's very hard to do in a country that has been the victim of three decades of warfare ripping apart its social networks.
On top of that, a nation in conflict, especially one with Afghanistan's weird placement geographically means that there are a complex range of competing interests which makes interpretation of intel harder to muster.
More troops - means more from countries other than the U.S. - i.e. from Germany which has been pressed especially hard. Only a few decades after the mess of WW II, Germany is fighting another bloody war - not only that the world should wake up to the twist and turn of the West (Germany on Britain's payroll?), but Germans themselves are wary of waging war.
On-the-ground spying means making contacts, reading papers, listening to conversations...it's social networking to the Nth degree. That's very hard to do in a country that has been the victim of three decades of warfare ripping apart its social networks.
On top of that, a nation in conflict, especially one with Afghanistan's weird placement geographically means that there are a complex range of competing interests which makes interpretation of intel harder to muster.
War makes spying hard.