Down in the comments of the last post on the subject, Mr. Sparkle asked for my "ontemporary strategy be for Afghanistan considering the real political limitations? And is COIN in your eyes doomed to fail?" Those are interesting questions. We're at a point when Americans really should be debating these questions because we have a chance to influence the process via the election of our commander-in-chief. At this point the President's wind-down strategy is untenable, though he doesn't know it yet; the Republican standard-bearer doesn't obviously have an Afghan strategy at all. He's been critical of the President, but hasn't shown much evidence of having grappled with the problem seriously. That's not surprising: Americans are tired of the wars, and hurting at home. Nevertheless, as long as we continue to send our own over there, we cannot afford the luxury of ignoring the problem. As a way of furthering the debate, I'm going to repost my answer to Spark's question on the front page. We can discuss it in the comments. If anyone wishes to discuss it offline, my contact information is on the sidebar. The kind of COIN that the US military developed in Iraq was and is a poor fit for Afghanistan, for reasons explored in 2009. The logistical situation doesn't favor most of the COIN methods that are politically feasible for the US military and our coalition. The main alternative model, which you might call Sri Lankan counterinsurgency, has already been proven unworkable by the Soviets. In this case there wouldn't be a major player working against us (as we were working against the Russians), but as long as Pakistan remains a safe haven that we cannot violate in a serious way, we're not going to be able to make that kind of model work either. (I pass over the moral difficulties with the model, given its political and practical impossibility.) What probably should have been done to start with is not to try to control territory, but to let the Northern Alliance get what it could with our help, and then use our alliance with them to set them up to tie down the Taliban permanently -- while also giving the Taliban territory they practically had to control, which would commit them to an expense of most of their resources. We could also have kept a certain special operations / intelligence presence in the NA-controlled areas in order to allow us to continue to prevent the Taliban from building enough concentrated power to break the Alliance again. We're apt to get a chance to replicate that model once ANA units start to fail in a big way following the pullout. We can cede to the Taliban enough territory that holding it will occupy their attention and resources; the NA is rearming, and if we withdrew support from the Karzai regime because of its failure to win legitimacy among the people (which will be obvious enough, given the loss of wide swaths of the south and southwest to the Taliban), we might well see them reassert political control of the center and north. So, one option might be to pursue a solution more like what we should have been aiming for in the first place: a balance of power between hostile regimes in Afghanistan that occupies each others' attention, so that we don't obtain much trouble from either of them, combined with a base of operations with the most-friendly of the two that allows us to identify and destroy any Qaeda-type groups forming camps in the Taliban areas. We would still need to address similar groups forming in Pakistan, but that's an issue with any solution set. It's a hard problem on its own, one that requires a pretty tough-minded intelligence and diplomatic strategy: infiltration of the Pak government so we can sort out who is playing us straight and who is not, coupled with counter-manipulations of our own to ensure that our interests are protected with both sets. That's not ideal for America, which does both intelligence and diplomacy fairly badly -- especially in this kind of high-risk, intensely manipulative model. Nevertheless, this is where we are: as I said, the problem exists in every solution set that is politically viable.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/sB1EfezN5uQ/afghanistan-tomorrow.html
Posted
May 14 2012, 04:45 AM
by
BLACKFIVE