Ask The Geek!

In a new occasional feature the Geek will respond to questions from his ever so personal mailbag---both snail and e.  Well, to err on the side of accuracy, the Geek will post answers to questions he would have liked to receive from people who ought to be asking them.  Here is the first---

Dear Geek,

There is a lot of verbiage to the effect that the Karzai government has opened preliminary talks with the two main insurgent groups, Taliban and the Haqqani network.  Word has it that the US is cooperating and facilitating the process.

Now my question is this: Does the start of talks mean that I and my colleagues on the editorial board have been correct and the US is about to accept defeat in Afghanistan or is the opposite the case (say it isn't so, Geek) and the US approach to counterinsurgency is actually working and Washington may achieve the minimal strategic goal of not losing?

Give me an answer ASAP as my coworkers here as well as our counterparts at the NYT and MoveOn.org are nervous wrecks.

Signed, Perplexed at the WaPo


Dear Perplexed,

You have asked a key question, indeed the keyest of questions.  In order to provide an answer which is complete, accurate, and (hopefully) easy to comprehend by people such as yourself, it is necessary to go back to the basics.  You have to understand how the insurgency game is played as well as how it ends to say nothing of why it ends to decide who is "winning" or "losing."

So, like the coach sez, "Back to basics."  (All of the following points have been discussed in previous posts, so consider this a review.  Pay attention as this will be on the final.

Insurgency is the armed expression of political disaffiliation with the goal of either completely replacing the system of government in operation or creating a new state.  The target in all insurgencies is the loyalty and support of the majority of the population most of whom are not particularly committed to either the government or the insurgents.  The purpose of all operations and activities both violent and peaceful by both the insurgents and the government is the mobilization of support among the uncommitted majority while demobilizing support from the opponent.

In the contest for the affiliation of the uncommitted majority, both the government and the insurgents have the same two basic methods.  One is to emphasize legitimacy.  The other is coercion.  Think of it as a set of wrenches and a battery of hammers.

Legitimacy comes in two forms, existential (the nature of the relationship itself between authority and citizen) and functional (what can or have you done for me the citizen lately?)

In the legitimacy contest the government normally has the advantages--if it can actually provide effective services to the population including security.  The question of existential legitimacy is harder to address, but in Afghanistan the insurgents can claim the higher authority as they maintain they are representing the purest, most fundamental form of Islam while the government is apostate.

An insurgent group is like a three tier onion.

The first layer is the passive mass support base.  These people are sources of support, logistics, intelligence and recruiting provided not too much risk or inconvenience is involved.

Closer to the center is the active mass support base.  People in this category are willing to take risks, pull triggers, plant bombs, penetrate the adversary's security forces, engage in propaganda and recruiting.  The majority of active combatants are drawn from this category.

At the center of the onion is the hard core.  These are the leaders, the planners, the executives, the middle management.  By and large the hard core is constituted of True Believers.  Typically the True Belief of the hard core members is so complete that the Belief becomes the source of individual identity and sense of self-worth to the extent that the insurgency is literally existential for these people.

The supporters of the government can be divided in the same way: passive and active mass support base and hard core.  The crucial difference rests with the simple fact that the hard core of the government and its supporting elites are not propelled by a totalistic True Belief.  For the government the insurgency does not constitute an existential conflict.

This distinction implies something quite central in the process of ending an insurgency,  In seeking both hostilities termination and the far more important end stage of conflict resolution, the government and its hard core supporters can choose to seek the reintegration of the insurgents as well as provide mechanisms of power sharing.  Because the struggle is not existential, the government can go for the option of operational dominance rather than absolute authority.

The insurgents do not have this option.  They must go for the big gold ring of absolute authority.  The power of True Belief admits of no compromise, no sharing.  This is particularly true with the Mighty Men of the One True Faith raised with the pornography of hell and the appeals of paradise from earliest childhood on.

Before looking in detail at what has transpired during the past year or so in Afghanistan, there is one last very important bit of context to keep in mind.  In an insurgent environment, outsiders have no existential legitimacy and only limited functional.  The single greatest source of functional legitimacy available to an outsider whether the US and the other components of the ISAF or the Arab and other foreign fighters in the ranks of Taliban is the capacity and willingness to insulate the civilians of the uncommitted majority from the risks of war.  This is why not killing local non-combatants is so critical--the outsider who kills least is most likely to gain legitimacy and thus the assistance of the locals.

The US and other ISAF forces have put the members of the active mass support base of the insurgents under ever greater pressure.  The costs, the risks of aligning with the insurgents have been increased, and the probability of a pay off for such alignment has decreased.  The Karzai government has made it clear that it is quite prepared to provide reintegration and power sharing mechanisms to insurgents who renounce violence and agree to abide by the Afghan constitution.

While operations in Afghanistan have been putting the squeeze on, other approaches have focused on the hard core.  It is critical to understand that the hard core cannot be converted, cannot be "pacified."  The nature and character of the religiously predicated insurgency means the hard core membership must be killed, or, if detained, be detained in perpetuity.

The permanent removal of senior or midlevel hard core personnel not only take personalities off the board, it disrupts the organization.  The brain drain of experienced commanders and technical specialists combines synergistically with the increase in operational frictions resulting from the disruption of the organization to limit combat and political effectiveness.

Over the past year, with a particular emphasis on the past six months, the US and its allies including the larger and marginally improved Afghan security forces have killed or captured over six hundred insurgents who are hard core and serve in command or technical billets.  Additionally, the Predator attacks in the FATA have energetically disassembled a generous chunk of hard core leaders and technicians.

The insurgents have been demonstrating a decreased capacity to gain and retain the initiative.  This does not mean they are incapable of fighting effectively in defense.  They can and are.  However, the insurgents have once again shifted to low risk attacks on soft targets.  This results in a greater number of dead and wounded civilians.

While Afghans are relatively tolerant of Muslim Taliban killing Muslim Afghan civilians as contrasted with infidel killed Muslim Afghan civilians, there are limits.  The limits have been reached.  One important result is the weakening of the insurgent passive mass support base.  Another is the increase in actionable intelligence from civilians.  Yet another is the willingness of offended locals to take up their "personal assault weapons" and take out after obnoxious Taliban or Haqqani network units.

The killing of hard core personalities along with the greater military pressure on the active mass support base members in Helmand province and nearby territory has complemented the Karzai political reconciliation approach.  It is to be regretted that the US at the highest levels of government was slow to understand and support what Karzai was up to.  Be that as it may, we have awakened and smelled the coffee.

As it stands right now the insurgents in Afghanistan are in a graveyard spiral.  For the moment at least, the correlation of forces favors the government in Kabul and its foreign supporters.  Continued use of the military hammers while backing Karzai's play should see an acceleration in the favorable trends early next year, say March or April.

Do not despair, Perplexed.  The Geek understands that his assessment does not lead to the conclusions which you and your associates at the WaPo desire but there is still hope.  The joker in the deck is President Obama's drop dead date for commencement of withdrawal.  It is still there, twisting in the wind, giving hope for the Ever Victorious Thugs of Allah.

Since insurgency is a contest of political wills which in no way exempts outsiders like us, it is yet possible for us to defeat ourselves.  Further hope exists in the friction between Mr Obama and the aren't-we-so-civilized bunch on his "Team" on the one hand and President Karzai on the other that the whole move toward genuine peace and power sharing talks may be abruptly ended at our instance.  Or, the Pakistani government may either collapse or lurch toward armed political Islam.

So, Perplexed, be of good cheer there are still ample opportunities for the US to suffer defeat.  Just think of those nifty headlines you might yet write.