But, being willing to look defeat square in the face without blanching, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon who is, as everybody knows, the finest military theorist since Karl von Clausewitz as well as an operational level commander on a par with George Patton, has informed the Security Council that Afghanistan is going to hell in a high speed, low drag wheelbarrow. Using the ever reliable indicators of roadside bombs, assassinations of low to mid-level government personnel in the provinces, and "complex" attacks, the SecGen all but declared the Taliban to have won.
The SecGen is not alone in his dismal appraisal of American and allied fortunes in Afghanistan. Over the past few weeks, those two pillars of independent, disinterested, and agenda-free impartial assessment of American success or failure in both war and diplomacy, the WaPo and the NYT, have made reached the same conclusion, at least by implication. The only feature lacking in either outlet is an editorial demanding a prompt American surrender to the Mighty and Pure Defenders of the One Truth Faith.
Admittedly, there are a number of good reasons to feel both gloom and doom hovering over the valleys of Afghanistan. The Afghan National Forces are far more a myth than a substantial reality capable of effective action in the field. The Karzai regime is corrupt, inefficient, self-serving, and far more interested in continuing its hold on power than seeing hostilities termination leading to long term conflict resolution. Mr Karzai himself is an excellent Afghan politician but a very infuriating partner with whom to engage.
At the same time Taliban deserves credit. It is comprised of tough, resilient fighters led by reasonably competent commanders. It has a set of clear goals. A very definite agenda well founded on religion. Beyond that Taliban has the support and assistance of the Pakistani Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence and, thus, constitutes a branch of the armed forces of Pakistan. As if that were not sufficient, Taliban receives support from Iran. Training camps are located convenient to the Afghan border in the wastes of rural Iran while the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps provides instructors. In a gesture of religious fraternity, the Iranians also provide explosively formed penetrators and other useful gadgets.
Even with the augmentation of American combat forces, the manpower available to the US and ISAF for combat missions is minimal (to put it charitably.) The correct decision by General McChrystal to limit the use of indirect and air delivered fire places more of a burden on the ground pounders, thus making the war even more manpower intensive. In order to assure that few (preferably no) Afghan non-combatants are killed by the "infidels," it is necessary to conduct each and every operation no matter how large or small on a retail basis, up close and personal.
Longer term this self-imposed constraint on the lethality of the battlefield is not only good, it is absolutely necessary. McChrystal understands perfectly that if civilians are to be killed, it is essential that they be killed by the insurgents. Insofar as Taliban et al kill civilians, non-combatants, women, children, and old men, whether by a roadside bomb, a suicide IED, or a "complex" attack, the resulting body count strengthens the counterinsurgent while weakening the insurgent.
That consideration constitutes a critical nuance unnoticed by either Generalissimo Ban Ki-Moon or the Deep Strategic Thinkers at the WaPo and NYT. The primary victims of the increased usage of roadside bombs and similar IEDs have been Afghan civilians. The same is true of attacks carried out by "martyrdom seekers" whether using suicide vests or vehicle borne IEDs. Even many of the larger attacks, characterized in the UN report as "complex" have resulted in more civilian than foreign combatant deaths.
The roadside bombs, the assassinations of minor government, police, and military personnel, even the majority of the "complex" attacks such as the strikes on foreign occupied guesthouses have not only resulted in an increased loathing for Taliban on the part of Afghans but show a high measure of desperation driving Taliban.
In previous insurgencies, assassination of local personnel have been a prominent feature either of the beginning of the insurgency or as a strong indicator of its being defeated. The same applies to indiscriminate attacks resulting in a high level of casualties among the uncommitted majority of the civilian population.
Previously in Iraq, in Pakistan, and in Afghanistan, when the insurgents have started killing civilians in large numbers, there has been an immediate push-back on the part of the threatened civilians. This is being seen again in Afghanistan in the past few months--the same period employed by Feldherr Ban Ki-Moon as a base for his prognostication of impending defeat.
Increasingly, local villagers equipped with (to use the term employed by US military sources) "personal assault weapons" have joined Afghan, US, and ISAF units to engage and destroy Taliban cells. The same upward trend is seen in the flow of unsolicited and actionable intelligence from locals who have had it up to their beards with Taliban.
Afghans, not unlike most people everywhere, are not strong on the idea of getting killed. They don't even appreciate the fine theological distinction between being killed by an "infidel" or an "apostate" rather than a good Muslim, a jihadi. Not surprisingly, the Afghans are ready, willing, and eager to seize the moment and abate the Taliban nuisance.
Rather than being indicators of near-term defeat, the increased Taliban reliance upon IEDs, assassination, and the odd media spectacular points to a loss of confidence within the command echelons of the insurgents. Taliban has lost the initiative in the quotidian conduct of operations; as a comparison between friendly initiated, hostile initiated, and meeting engagements shows, the capacity to control the pace and direction of operations has shifted increasingly in favor of the US and ISAF.
This pleasant reality in no way lessens the underlying reality that the war is not over. The US and its allies are not yet sure of achieving the minimum strategic goal of "not-losing," but the vectors have shifted in that direction. The next six to twelve months will be a long, hard pull in Afghanistan. Marja is not yet fully secured. The Kandahar operation has been delayed. Most importantly, the Afghan national government and forces have not yet shown either the will or the ability to carry their share of the freight.
Right now the major lost opportunity is not military but falls rather in the area of governance. The US and its allies have fallen too far into the trap of believing that the central government of Afghanistan is just that--a government. The US has also allowed itself to believe that success in Afghanistan cannot occur without the existence of a strong, credible, and effective central government.
These twin notions are bogus. For much of its existence, Afghanistan has gotten along quite well without a strong, credible, and effective central government. The Afghan culture states that a person's primary loyalty is to the extended family, secondary loyalty is to the clan, and the tertiary loyalty is to the tribe. This hierarchy allows but does not compel a loyalty to the central regime in Kabul.
This situation implies that Afghans have a high propensity toward and a good capacity for self-organizing. The self-organizing process moves from the most local to the more distant and has the automatic advantage of assuring high group coherence through the necessity for voluntary collaboration in the search for mutual self-interest.
The operational consequence of this orientation within the human terrain of Afghanistan is obvious. The US and its allies should--must, perhaps--put Kabul to the side and deal with the local power structure. The winning political approach is that of empowering the self-organizing capacities of the Afghan villages, the neighborhoods of Marja or Kandahar. Working with and backing the needs of the locals in all aspects of security, governance, and economic development would allow the effective circumvention of the obstructionists of Kabul. Doing things this way would have the additional advantage of cutting off Taliban from any pretense of legitimacy, by denying it the large target of central government corruption, cronyism , and flat out inefficiency.
There is a very high probability that General McChrystal is as aware of the self-organizing and provincial orientation of the Afghan human terrain as he is of the grave inadequacies of the central regime. If his lords and masters inside the Beltway can be brought to see the light, there is a better than good chance that the next few months will see a political success parallel the probable military defeat of Taliban.
There is, of course, only the slimmest of chances that the Obama administration can wake up to the tribal and family realities of Afghanistan so as to give a green light to adding the final ingredient which would well neigh onto guarantee success of an acceptable sort in Afghanistan. And, there is absolutely no chance in hell that the WaPo-NYT Strategic Studies Academy or Geo-Political Genus Ban Ki-Moon will ever get it.
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