A Prescription for Tragedy in Afghanistan

If media leaks are to be believed, President Obama will attempt to chart a middle way in Afghanistan, sending more soldiers but not as many as General Stanley McChrystal would like. The New York Times describes the emerging strategy as “McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country,” a blend of the diametrically opposed approaches advocated by the general (who favors a counterinsurgency strategy) and the vice president (who wants to do counterterrorism operations only). The Times writes that "the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Maza-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said." In the rest of Afghanistan, presumably, operations would be limited to a few air raids and Special Operations raids. Other media reports suggest that the administration is looking to send 10,000 to 20,000 troops -- not the 40,000 that McChrystal wants.

To Washington politicians, this no doubt sounds like a sensible compromise. To anyone steeped in military strategy it sounds as if it could be a prescription for tragedy. The administration seems intent on doing just enough to keep the war effort going without doing enough to win it. That is also what the U.S. did in Iraq from 2003 to 2007, and for that matter in Afghanistan from 2001 to today. The ambivalence of our politicians places US troops in harm's way without giving them a chance to prevail.

It is hard, of course, to make any definitive statement until the administration makes public its strategy. It is always possible that the final decision will not resemble the leaks we read today. But if the Times report is accurate, senior White House officials are bent on imposing a curious strategy on our on-the-ground commander. Most of Afghanistan's big cities are not seriously threatened by insurgents. Notwithstanding a few high-profile attacks, Kabul is pretty safe, as I discovered for myself during a recent visit. So too with Herat, Jalalabad, Maza-i-Sharif, and the rest. Even Kandahar doesn't have much violence, although the Taliban undoubtedly exert some control over what goes on inside the city limits. The problem lies in the countryside, where the Taliban have been pursuing the same strategy that the mujahideen used against the Soviets in the 1980s -- consolidate control in rural areas and then launch attacks on the cities where foreign troops are garrisoned.

The Taliban right now are still working to secure the countryside and it would be a grave mistake if we allowed them to pursue that strategy hindered only by a few air strikes that inevitably would be ineffective unless we had troops on the ground to generate accurate targeting intelligence. That doesn't mean that we should send forces into remote outposts where no one lives. McChrystal is, in fact, pulling back such small bases, and rightly so. But his strategy envisions major operations to secure the Helmand River Valley, a rural area but one with plenty of substantial towns and villages. This is the economic heart of southern Afghanistan and the country's major poppy-growing region. His strategy also envisions taking control of the rural areas that surround major cities such as Kandahar and Kabul. In the case of the capital, that means pacifying provinces to the south such as Logar and Wardak. The approaches to those cities have been in the grip of the Taliban, and breaking their vice grip will require more troops.

Similarly, Baghdad did not start to become secure in 2007 until the U.S. deployed substantial surge troops to the "gates" of the city -- the belt of rural territory surrounding the capital including the "triangle of death" to the south. If the Obama strategy does not envision a similar offensive in Afghanistan, it will be making a terrible mistake. But if such an offensive is planned it will take a lot of troops -- 10,000 to 20,000 probably won't cut it, especially if most of those are providing combat "enablers" (medevac, air support, route clearance, intelligence, and the like).

But don't just take my word for it. Here is what a senior Afghan general in Kabul told me not long ago: "It's not enough to hit a terrorist sanctuary or two with Predators and Hellfires and leave the Taliban to breed. That will only prolong the fighting. In my opinion a counterterrorist strategy is not the answer. We need extra forces to cover all the threatened areas, to keep highways open, and to accelerate the growth of the army and police." I can only hope that the White House will heed his words.

How We Can Win in Afghanistan

Max Boot

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/how-we-can-win-in-afghanistan-15257

The terms counterterrorism and counterinsurgency have become common currency this decade in the wake of September 11, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq. To a layman’s ear, they can sound like synonyms, especially because of our habit of labeling all insurgents as terrorists. But to military professionals, they are two very different concepts. Counterterrorism refers to operations employing small numbers of Special Operations “door kickers” and high-tech weapons systems such as Predator drones and cruise missiles. Such operations are designed to capture or kill a small number of “high-value targets.” Counterinsurgency, known as COIN in military argot, is much more ambitious. According to official Army doctrine, COIN refers to “those military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological, and civic actions taken by a government to defeat insurgency.” The combined approach typically requires a substantial commitment of ground troops for an extended period of time.

When General Stanley McChrystal was selected on May 11 of this year as the American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, it was by no means certain which approach he would employ. His background is almost entirely in counterterrorism. He had been head of the Joint Special Operations Command (comprising elite units such as the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy’s SEALs) when it was carrying out daring raids to capture Saddam Hussein and kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. If he had decided to follow the same approach in Afghanistan, he would have had the support of Vice President Joe Biden and numerous congressional Democrats who favor a narrow counterterrorism strategy to fight al-Qaeda and who want to cut the number of American troops to a bare minimum.

But that is not what McChrystal has chosen to do. He has decided, as he put it in an “interim assessment” dated August 30 that was later leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, that “success demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign.” A close reading of that document, which was directed at the Pentagon and White House, as well as the “Counterinsurgency Guidance” drafted at his behest around the same time and directed at his own troops, provides a window into his thinking. It shows why a COIN campaign is needed, how it would be carried out, and why the kind of narrow counterterrorism effort favored by so many amateur military strategists is unlikely to succeed. _____________

The case against a counterterrorism approach in Afghanistan is laid out most clearly in the Counterinsurgency Guidance. McChrystal’s focus is on explaining why conventional military operations cannot defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, but the same arguments apply to counterterrorism generally, which is a smaller-scale version of the same conceit—that the U.S. military can defeat an insurgency simply by killing insurgents. McChrystal writes that the math doesn’t add up:

From a conventional standpoint, the killing of two insurgents in a group of ten leaves eight remaining: 10 - 2 = 8. From the insurgent standpoint, those two killed were likely related to many others who will want vengeance. If civilian casualties occurred, that number will be much higher. Therefore, the death of two creates more willing recruits: 10 minus 2 equals 20 (or more) rather than 8.

He goes on to note that the “attrition” approach has been employed in Afghanistan over the past eight years by a relatively small number of American forces and their NATO allies. Yet, he writes, “eight years of individually successful kinetic operations have resulted in more violence.” He continues: “This is not to say that we should avoid a fight, but to win we need to do much more than simply kill or capture militants.” What else, then, must coalition forces do? McChrystal’s answer:

An effective “offensive” operation in counterinsurgency is one that takes from the insurgent what he cannot afford to lose—control of the population. We must think of offensive operations not simply as those that target militants, but ones that earn the trust and support of the people while denying influence and access to the insurgents.

The Counterinsurgency Guidance points out that firing guns and missiles can often make it more difficult to win “trust and support.” An anecdote makes the point: An ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] patrol was traveling through a city at a high rate of speed, driving down the center to force traffic off the road. Several pedestrians and other vehicles were pushed out of the way. A vehicle approached from the side into the traffic circle. The gunner fired a pen flare at it, which entered the vehicle and caught the interior on fire. As the ISAF patrol sped away, Afghans crowded around the car. How many insurgents did the patrol make that day?

As an example of how “self-defeating” the use of force can be, McChrystal could just as easily have chosen an example involving a Predator drone firing a Hellfire missile or an F-16 dropping a 500-pound bomb—the kind of strike that often causes considerable “collateral damage” and that, if the more limited counterterrorism approach were to be adopted, would become the centerpiece of our strategy.

McChrystal counsels his troops to take a different path, to “embrace the people,” to “partner with the ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] at all echelons,” and to “build governance capacity and accountability.” He urges coalition troops to be “a positive force in the community; shield the people from harm; foster stability. Use local economic initiatives to increase employment and give young men alternatives to insurgency.”

This would mean putting less emphasis not only on using force but also on “force protection” measures (such as body armor and heavily armored vehicles), which distance the security forces from the population. As an example of what he expects, McChrystal cites an anecdote involving an “ISAF unit and their partnered Afghan company” that were “participating in a large shura [tribal council] in a previously hostile village.” During the shura, which was attended by “nearly the entire village,” he writes, “two insurgents began firing shots at one of the unit’s observation posts.” The sergeant in charge of the post could have returned fire but he chose not “to over-react and ruin the meeting.” “Later,” this example concludes, “the village elders found the two militants and punished them accordingly.”

While counterintuitive to a conventional military mind, such thinking is hardly novel for anyone familiar with the history of counterinsurgency. McChrystal’s advice to embrace the population and be sparing in the use of firepower has been employed by successful counterinsurgents from the American Army in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century; to the British in Malaya in the 1950s and Northern Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s; to, more recently, the Americans in Iraq. By contrast, counterinsurgency strategies that rely on firepower have usually failed, whether tried by the French in Algeria, by the U.S. in Vietnam, or by the Russians in Afghanistan.

The risk of the counterinsurgency approach—which helps to explain why it has not been adopted in Afghanistan until now or in Iraq until 2007—is that, in the short term, it will result in more casualties for coalition forces. Placing troops among the people and limiting their expenditure of firepower makes them more vulnerable at first than if they were sequestered on heavily fortified bases and ventured out only in heavily armored convoys. But in the long term, as the experience of Iraq shows, getting troops off their massive bases is the surest way to pacify the country and bring down casualties, both for civilians and security forces.

Adding more easy targets for the enemy is not good strategy.
• I EXPECT LEADERS AT ALL LEVELS TO SCRUTINIZE AND LIMIT THE USE OF FORCE LIKE CLOSE AIR SUPPORT AGAINST RESIDENTIAL COMPOUNDS AND OTHER LOCATIONS LIKELY TO PRODUCE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS GUIDANCE....THE USE OF AIR TO GROUND MUNITIONS AND INDIRECT FIRES AGAINST RESIDENTIAL COMPOUNDS IS ONLY AUTHORIZED UNDER VERY LIMITED AND PRESCRIBED CONDITIONS......
....ANY ENTRY INTO AN AFGHAN HOUSE SHOULD ALWAYS BE ACCOMPLISHED BY AFGHAN NATIONAL SECURITY FORCES, WITH THE SUPPORT OF LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND ACCOUNT FOR THE UNIQUE CULTURAL SENSITIVITIES TOWARD LOCAL WOMEN.
..NO ISAF FORCES WILL ENTER OR FIRE UPON,OR FIRE INTO A MOSQUE OR ANY RELIGIOUS OR HISTORICAL SITE EXCEPT IN SELF-DEFENSE. ALL SEARCHES AND ENTRIES FOR ANY OTHER REASON WILL BE CONDUCTED BY ANSF.
Excerpts from General McChrystal TACTICAL DIRECTIVE -6 JULY 09.
;
More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Thank you obambi and McCoocoo.

We can’t allow our military to be put in harms way by someone like obambi. He sees our casualties as a way of getting rid of political opposition.

This crap was tried in Vietnam and failed. We took Afghanistan with a few troops and lots of tech and bombs, not lovey dovey candy patrols, not by building a nation. We need to stop building up our ideological enemies.

We already have one moslem country with nukes, Saudi with Oil and Iran with fanatics, why give them more

they still consider US = infidels.

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