The Afghanistan Fiasco Calls for a New Strategy

By Brigitte L. Nacos

During this long hot summer at home, the war in Afghanistan became more costly in terms of American lives and funds without any positive signs of progress. Ironically, as much as the conservative cabal fights the administration on literally all domestic policies, it is an enthusiastic cheerleader of the president’s troop surge and his counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. In spite of this, the majority of Democrats in Congress and the majority of Americans are no longer supporting the Afghanistan War. Yet, President Obama sticks to a strategy that has not worked so far and has little or no chance to work in the future. In another sign that things are not going as planned, General David Petraeus signaled this week that the president’s promise to start the withdrawal of troops in July 2011 is not written in stone.

Although the U.S. pours month after month billions of dollars into the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the coffins of the corrupt Karzai government, the training and equipment of police and army forces that cannot be trusted, and the rebuilding or building of infrastructure and civil society around the country, Taliban and Al Qaeda have gained ground and attacked ISAF bases and personnel more frequently.

It did not take the military WikiLeaks documents to reveal that the “war on terrorism” in Afghanistan and Pakistan was a lost cause during the Bush administration. In spite of the troop surge things have not turned around during the Obama presidency.  

Today’s editorial in the New York Times offers a common sense analysis of the situation, asks the right questions. But as much as “Americans need regular, straight talk from President Obama about what is happening in Afghanistan, for good and ill, and the plan going forward,” as the editorial concluded, most needed is a new strategy that returns to the mission’s goal: fight Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorist and insurgents and thereby weaken or eliminate them as credible threats.

Forget about winning the hearts and minds of Afghans and building a stable democracy there. That was and is a pipe dream of those neo-conservatives that pushed for the Iraq War at the expense of finishing the mission in Afghanistan in the first place.

Today’s editorial in the Times notes that “This country would also do enormous damage to its moral and strategic standing if it now simply abandoned the Afghan people to the Taliban’s brutalities.” But unless the vast majority of Afghans stop to cooperate with the Taliban for whatever the reasons, nobody should expect for Americans to die and pay for  a mission impossible?

I am not advocating a sudden, complete withdrawal of forces but a complete change in strategy. Obviously, the counterinsurgency approach that General Stanley McChrystal embraced first and General Petraeus pursues now has not worked as sold to the president.

This counterinsurgency model or COIN that the Pentagon and its leading generals prefer, requires troops to live in close proximity to civil populations, win people’s trust, and build or rebuild not only schools and hospitals and infrastructure but, most important, governmental institutions and processes as well as civic society. But David Kilcullan, a leading theorist and proponent of counterinsurgency strategy in the war against “global jihad,” has recognized that “in a counterinsurgency environment, operating amongst the people, force is always attended by collateral damage, alienated populations, feuds and other unintended consequences.” That’s precisely what happens in Afghanistan on a daily basis.

Supporters of COIN point to Iraq as a case where this strategy worked ultimate after the troop surge and under the leadership of Petraeus. But Afghanistan is not Iraq nor are other failed states like Somalia or Yemen. For West Point alumnis Douglas Macgregor, a retired Army colonel, “the idea what we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshapre the culture of the Islamic world is nonsense.”

What, then, would be a more promising and less costly strategy? Of my readings this summer addressing strategies in fighting the non-traditional wars of the 21^st century, the most interesting was an article by John Arquilla in the March/April 2010 issue of Foreign Policy that suggests a persuasive strategy in fighting network wars “cheaper, smaller, and smarter.”  I took note of Arquilla’s understanding of how contemporary terrorists (or other insurgents or drug cartels) fight unsymmetrical netwars and how the military of nation-states ought to fight in these new conflicts well before 9/11, when he wrote about the challenge of the new terrorism. At the core of his argument then and now: “It takes networks to fight networks. Governments that would defend against netwar may have to adopt organizational designs and strategies like those of their adversaries.”

In the Foreign Policy article, Arquilla is more specific in his prescription of many and small beats rather than few and large units. For Arquilla, in netwars  “even quite small units—like a platoon of 50 or so soldiers—can wield great power when connected to others, especially friendly indigenous forces, and when networking closely with even a handful of attack aircraft.” Most importantly, this approach was successful in the very first phase of the Afghanistan war. As Arquilla envisions the “many and small” units,

“The model for military intervention would be the 200 Special Forces “horse soldiers” who beat the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan late in 2001. Such teams would deploy quickly and lethally, with ample reserves for relieving “first waves” and dealing with other crises.”

By and large this strategy is not unlike the one that Vice President Joe Biden favored over the counterinsurgency strategy emerging out of last year’s White House review in that its goal is to fight the cells and nodes of terrorist and insurgent networks, not to build a democratic state in the western image. 

Arquilla’s strategy promises to be more effective and far less costly but also smart because collateral damage is far less likely than in the counterinsurgency model.

Comments

[ChronicDOMS]

Close, but no cigar. First, there is nothing essentially different between the current COIN strategy and that espoused by Arquilla. Those tactics directed specifically against the insurgence are primarily network-based and certainly involve partnering with friendly indigenous forces. The large footprint in Afghanistan is by and large logistical and directed towards civil support.

Second, invoking Kilcullan against McChrystal and Patraeus is absurd--Kilcullan was one of the central intellects behind the current COIN doctrine.

The central misunderstanding in this op-ed is betrayed in the following paragraph:

"Forget about winning the hearts and minds of Afghans and building a stable democracy there. That was and is a pipe dream of those neo-conservatives that pushed for the Iraq War at the expense of finishing the mission in Afghanistan in the first place."

This is the darling argument of the opposition cum majority, but is fundamentally flawed (and really, this op-ed comes "this" close to revealing why). The current fiasco in Afghanistan was lost regardless of Iraq. There aren't enough troops to accomplish the mission because the mission can't be accomplished. Bush was absolutely correct when he announced "mission complete," he simply needed to act on his own realization.

The real culprit here is the Army's own momentum. The US has no business conducting invasion operations--we simply don't have the stomach for it. Not that it really matters in the case of Afghanistan--the Soviets absolutely had the stomach for it, but the Afghans proved indomitable. The US Army, in its quest for relevance in an increasingly Air Power world, sold the administration on the nation building mission (though we can't call it that, can we?). And now here we are.

Kilcullan is right--our presence creates accidental guerillas. Had our horse soldiers ridden into Kabul with Dostum, Ata Muhammed et.al., and handed them the keys to the city along with a stern and credible warning that their destruction would be next should they fall out of line, this would all be over. The Northern Alliance would have rounded up the crazies for public execution in the Kabul Soccer stadium. Afghanistan would be the brutal place it is today, but utterly inhospitable to Al Queda and their ilk.