In Afghanistan We Are Winning--Except When We Are Losing

The difference a week makes!  Only seven or so days ago the Geek posted on how even the war hating folks at the WaPo grudgingly admitted that the US and its allies were compiling a record of success against Taliban and the Haqqani network.  Alas!  The WaPo must have gotten its facts wrong.  Or so it appears today.

Along with other MSM, the Leaders Of The Washington Press now takes the position that the US is not making any real progress in Afghanistan.  Sourcing the new stance to the usual unnamed people in "US intelligence agencies," the latest party line is so dismal that one gets the impression it is all over excepting the Taliban victory parade.

The British have taken a more nuanced (confused?) view of the situation.  The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, is under the impression that "progress" is being made.  Her Majesty's senior military figures are marching in the gloom parade, averring that the US/NATO/ISAF/Afghan national forces have "failed to inflict significant damage on Taliban."

It is self-evident that both interpretations cannot be accurate.  So, how to parse the contradiction?

The we-are-losing camp predicates its stance on several factors.  One is the resilience of the Taliban and Haqqani network, their ability to absorb casualties in the upper and middle rank leadership and not lose either political will or operational capacity.  The other is the existence of cross-border sanctuaries in the FATA providing ample space and time for recovery, resupply, and retraining.

As context it must be noted that both factors--inherent resiliency and cross-border safe-havens--have played critical roles in previous counterinsurgency operations.  Of the two there is no doubt but the self-organizing capacities of insurgent groups coupled with the imperative that defeat is existential in nature has provided the staying power of insurgencies from the American War of Independence on through to the contemporary events in Afghanistan.  The importance of cross-border sanctuaries is more debatable.

It has often been argued, for example, that the closing of the Yugoslav border by Tito to the Greek Communist guerrillas was critical in their defeat.  A closer examination shows that this thesis is untenable, that the Communist insurgents were actually beaten by a combination of their own political ineptitude and the growing competence of the US assisted and trained Greek National Forces.

The British success in the twelve year long Emergency in Malaya has been credited in large measure to the absence of external sanctuaries for the Communist insurgents.  While it is true that the "Bandits" of Malaya had no readily available safe havens, the actual cause of British success was their superior operational level doctrine, tactics, and the skill of their troops in the bush.

Critics of the American war in South Vietnam both at the time and retrospectively have attributed the US defeat to the ability of the Viet Cong and Peoples Army of North Vietnam to use safe areas in Cambodia and Laos for supply, unit restoration, and concentration centers.  American efforts to block the logistics routes through these countries both by air and land were not successful.  So, the critics have concluded, the enemy had unbeatable advantages with the result that the Americans and their South Vietnamese clients were defeated.

That analysis grossly oversimplifies a defeat which arose from many causes.  But, like other unicausal hypothesis, it is easy to understand and has the added advantage of displacing responsibility for failure from the Americans (their approach to fighting the war as well as their goals) to outside factors.  The worst that can be said of the American way of war in South Vietnam according to this view is that we were too kind, too gentle, too restrained.  We should have expanded the war to include the sanctuary areas and, if we had, we would have won.

The evaluation of the current conflicting views--are we winning or losing?--must be considered in terms of these past understandings.

Of the two factors referenced by the advocates of we-are-losing, it is easy to dispatch the one of insurgent resolve and resilience.  It is true.  It is also not all that relevant.  The irrelevance is indicated by the existence of preliminary conversations between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.  Because Taliban is a loose assemblage of many different self-organizing groups, it is almost inevitable that some of the groups will have concluded that the degree of pressure and risk currently exerted by the US and its partners is too great for the potential rewards.  Thus, some have concluded that inclusion in the government structure through talk will provide all the requisite benefits without the risks.

Self-organization is thus both a strength and a weakness for insurgent entities.  It allows for great resilience under pressure.  At the same time it makes the path from violence to talks easy and attractive if the status quo power opts for power sharing while its military forces apply prolonged, unacceptably high pressure.

This leaves the question of the safety zones of the FATA.  There is no doubt that the insurgents enjoy a great advantage in having immediate and very convenient access to a high degree of safety right across the border in North Waziristan and other Agencies of the FATA.  It is not clear,  however, that the advantages are such as to constitute a war winner.

The US would like Pakistan to bite the bullet and move into North Waziristan.  The Obama administration has put great effort into convincing Islamabad to do its heavy lifting.  The efforts have failed.  Absent troops on the ground, the UAV campaign against Taliban and the Haqqani network will have only limited success.  The Predators and Reapers have killed a gratifyingly large number of insurgent leaders and trigger pullers.  The net positives of the campaign have been highlighted by the disapprobation expressed by UN officials and others of the you-Americans-don't-fight-fair crowd.

Even if by some miracle the Pakistanis were to move into the safe haven zone(s), the amount of benefit which would accrue is an open question.  As recent events have shown, the Pakistanis are ready, willing, and eager to allow the insurgents ample opportunity to leave the "threatened" area and relocate elsewhere.  The same would be expectable in any future operations.

Even with this in mind, it is to the advantage of the Obama administration as well as the governments of other countries exposed in Afghanistan to assure that a mighty moan is made regarding the sanctuaries of the FATA.  If nothing else, it allows the pinning of the tail of failure on the donkey of Pakistan.  In a more positive vein, the "leaks" from "US intelligence agencies" provide more pressure on Islamabad.  Looking ahead, should the Republicans do as well next Tuesday as projected, there will be more resistance in Congress to large foreign aid checks made payable to the government or army of Pakistan.

The administration can (or at least should) wave the Republican club in the direction of Islamabad.  "You want the money?  Well, you had best produce some results.  Fast."  This sort of (un)diplomatic language is easily understood by the extortionists in Islamabad.  It is, after all, the same game the Pakistanis have played for decades--only in reverse.

But, with all that, where does it leave us?  Are we wining or losing?

The short--and accurate--answer is: both.  Militarily we are winning in one very important sense.  The US and its partners hold the initiative on the battlefield.  A simple but highly accurate way of measuring who holds the initiative is comparing the number of friendly initiated contacts in comparison to the number of hostile initiated ones or those of a meeting engagement sort.  For most of the past year, the balance has swung to the US and its associates.  The swing has been most impressive in the past six months.

Another useful metric is provided by the nature of the tactics and operations used by the insurgents.  Over the past several months the insurgents have relied increasingly on indirect attacks on soft targets.  Roadside bombs, suicide bombers, and similar methods have been employed preferentially against civilians.  Other than when forced to do so by friendly forces, the insurgents have avoided force-on-force engagements.  This is not the sign of a confident enemy--or one of particular competence.

The losing occurs on the Afghan government side of the picture.  Put bluntly, the central government has not been able to provide services or even a credible presence in most of the territory cleared by military operations.  As a result there is no confidence on the part of the local populations that the insurgents will not come back as soon as the Americans or other foreign forces depart.

Confidence in the staying power or even the basic legitimacy of the central government is also eroded by the persistent corruption and systemic inefficiency of the central government.  This is worsened by the central government's extreme reluctance to see effective local instruments develop.

Continued failure on the part of Kabul in these critical areas will render all military successes irrelevant.  Indeed, the patterns of failure exhibited by the central government would render meaningless even the most successful Pakistani operations in the FATA.  In a way that is sublimely ironic, a hypothetical Pakistani military operation which resulted in the complete shut down of the safe harbors in the FATA would simply see the insurgents relocate to the Afghan side of the border.

The takeaway is just this: We are winning--except where and when we are losing.  But, the reasons pumped out as to why we are losing are not accurate.  They may not be bogus per se, but they are misleading.

Insurgent resilience is a given in every insurgency.  Cross-border sanctuaries are nice, but not war winners in and of themselves.  Most importantly, when night falls what matters is not simply the balance of success in battle but rather the capacities and perceived legitimacy of the government.  If either of those last features are absent or severely lacking, the war has been won by the insurgents no matter what the god of battles might have declared..