Posted on 10/15/2003 10:15:32 PM PDT by PatrioticCowboy
True of the enemy, but by no means of the circumstances, which are very different between Afghanistan and Iraq.
Afghanistan has a centuries long tradition of local, tribal autonomy and warlordism. It has has terrain that is conducive to guerilla warfare (mountains, caves). It has never been developed. The key to victory there is to build a central government that has some reasonable measure of control, but this control can, in turn, only be established by a professional and multi-ethnic military. Because there is absolutely no tradition of such a military among Afghanis, it will be a long and slow process to create it. It will be, and has been, put together one brigade at a time. Control by the central government, and therein the consolidation of our victory, will be established gradually over years.
Iraq is very different. A large majority of able bodied, male citizens served in a national army under Saddam. It may not have been a terribly professional or effective one by American standards, but it was worlds closer than the warlord "armies" of Afghanistan. Although again subpar by our standards, and allowed to dilapidate under Saddam, Iraq is also drastically more developed than Afghanistan, and it's citizens are vastly better educated and more literate. Building both security forces and new governmental institutions can proceed much more rapidly for these reasons.
Guerilla warfare will also be much harder to sustain in Iraq. The terrain in much of the country is much less favorable than in Afghanistan. Afghanistan also has refuge for fighters in the "Tribal Territories" of northern Pakistan. Granted that Syria and Iran are and may continue to support guerillas, but they can be held more accountable, as formal nation-states, than can the mafiosa of the lawless Tribal Territories. Nor can guerillas, for the most part, move back and forth between Iraq and its unfriendly neighbors through deep and torturous ravines and valleys, as in Afghanistan. Within Iraq there are few caves or other analogues to the mountain redoubts of Afghani guerrilas. They depend instead on a system of safe houses which is steadily being deconstructed by raids, and will be degraded even more thoroughly as Iraqis take charge of their own country.
In short, victory will be consolidate over the space of a few years in Iraq (say 2 or 3). In Afghanistan it will take more than a few years (say 4 or 5).
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