Overshadowed by the Great Debt Ceiling Battle, the Great Downgrading, and the Miracle of the Job Free Recovery, the US has reached a very critical crossroad in Afghanistan. In truth we haven't just reached it, we have pushed for it, rushed to it, and sought it with the eagerness of a drowning man clawing for the sky.
The US wants out of Afghanistan in the worst sort of way. With the exception of some military people, most but not all of senior rank, the current political leadership of the US along with most of We the People want out, right now if possible, but tomorrow at the latest. This is the ground reality regardless of President Obama's patent bromide about pressing on regardless delivered in the wake of the Chinook shoot-down and the deaths of more than two dozen men from Boat Six.
Of course, We the People, the congress, and the Clueless Guy in the Oval would like it best if the US can get out of Afghanistan with a modicum of dignity and a sufficient simulacrum of success to offset the billions of bucks spent and the hundreds of lives sacrificed on the alter of "nation-building." Congressman Ron Paul was speaking for many besides himself at the Iowa debate when he denounced the American adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan while warning against any repeat in Iran. Heads no doubt nodded in agreement across the country as he delivered his neo-isolationist message for the umpteenth time.
One unnecessary and unjustifiable war is reaching its quite unsatisfying conclusion. As the Iraqi excuse for a parliament dithers over whether or not to invite American "trainers" to remain in country after the last day of this year, it has become brilliantly clear that only Saddam Hussein lost to a greater extent than did the US over the course of this long, bloody exercise in regime change.
Iran has emerged as the big winner in the contest as shown by Baghdad's alignment with Tehran over the question of Syria. This is simply the most recent, most dramatic example of the triumph of Shia faith over all other considerations in the deeply divided human terrain of Iraq. But, far outside of international politics, in the quotidian dealings of business, it is instructive that US companies have lost out repeatedly and consistently to competitors from China, Russia, and Europe for the lucrative opportunities available in the country which was--we were assured--going to pay for the costs of liberation, rejoice in new democratic freedoms, greet American troops as the French did after D-Day, and generally rally to the American flag.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the US lost in the Iraqi gambit. And, now, we face losing in Afghanistan as well. No, we will not be defeated in the field by Taliban, the Haqqani network, and their Pakistani backers. There are simply not enough lucky shots by RPGs to do that. Rather, we will conspire in our own defeat at the hands not of Taliban alone, nor by the combination of Taliban and Pakistan but rather by the joint efforts of "our man in Kabul," Hamid Karzai, the Pakistanis, and Taliban.
Karzai wants out of the war with a fervor which surpasses even that of the US and its partners in the ISAF. To this end he has been seeking a species of separate peace with Taliban for some time now. He has been seeking this goal not through the public means of the Supreme Peace Jurga, a large, unwieldy and totally implausible group, but through low key, private, and ever-so-discrete conversations in the presidential palace as well as out of country locations.
The glue which would hold any peace agreement together is simply that Karzai as well as the overwhelming majority of Taliban is Pashtu speaking. They are all good Pashtuns on the Secret Peace Bus. As the Pakistanis understand and support the Pashtun super-tribe due to its domination of the key border areas of the FATA, there is no doubt but Islamabad is well represented on the Peace Bus as well. This means their strategic political position in Afghanistan will be protected in full.
The ethnic Uzbeks, Tajjks, and Hazaras constituting the majority of the population in northern Afghanistan are not represented on the Karzai-Taliban-Pakistan All Pashtun Peace Express. These are the same people who suffered the most under the rule of the Taliban and whose Northern Alliance comprised the bulk of the indigenous fighters cooperating with the American invaders ten years ago.
It is not surprising that the old Northern Alliance is silently reforming. It is no surprise that the non-Pushtu population is rearming at a great rate of knots. Nor will it be surprising when renewed civil war greets the announcement of a peace brokered by Pushtuns for the benefit of Pushtuns. Last of all, there will be no surprise when the US greets the peace with loud applause and the ensuing internal war with a complete and utter silence.
It is not that the Deep Thinkers around the Oval are unaware of what is taking place in Kabul. Even if the totality of American intelligence assets was detained on matters of tactical and operational focus, the US is aware of both the ongoing Karzai effort and the probable outcome(s.) The former head of Afghanistan's premiere intelligence service, Amrolah Saleh, has been all but shouting it from the minarets since he was forced from office last year by Karzai.
Saleh is not only very highly respected by intelligence professionals from the US, the UK, and elsewhere, he is personally honest, not at all corrupt, and, most important, committed to the notion of an Afghanistan which includes all the several ethnic groups on a basis of equality before the law as well as in politics. He is post-tribal to a fault. And, in Afghanistan, being post-tribal in worldview is a grave fault.
Saleh's message is simple, easy to corroborate, and very well rooted historically. Should the Great All Pashtun Peace Express arrive at its destination, the result will be fatal for Afghanistan. In short, Afghanistan will return to what it was the day before the first American boot hit Afghan soil. A predominantly Pushtu, religiously predicated, and robustly violent Taliban will run the southern two thirds of the country to the advantage of Islamabad while the reconstituted Northern Alliance will fight a defensive insurgency based upon ethnic identity in the final third.
A decade or more of war, hundreds of American lives, billions of dollars to say nothing of the indescribable sufferings of the Afghans caught in the crossfire, will finally result in a back-to-the-future ending. Worst of all, there is virtually nothing the US can do about it.
We were doomed in our efforts the moment George W. Bush and his neocon ninny crew decided to engage in nation-building in Afghanistan in lieu of a simple, straight forward punitive expedition. In the rush to invade Iraq so as to teach the Arabs a lesson in how to elect good men which was not needed or indicated, the men of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration assured we were on a mission-impossible in Afghanistan.
Now we must reap the harvest of the seeds those intellectually challenged, ideologically driven men planted. We can see the crop now, a government which is a broken, rotten travesty, a people demoralized and victimized by a war in which none have a direct stake, an army and police force which exists more in name than in the field, and an "ally" in Pakistan which is an adversary in all but name. All that is needed to complete the harvest is the "success" of the Karzai-Taliban-Pakistan All Pushtun Peace Bus.
When that happens--and it is question of when not if, the US will be (including Vietnam) 0 for 3 in large scale interventionary operations. That record is not simply pathetic, it is one of self-inflicted defeats unrivaled by any other major country in recent history. (Even the French were only 0 for 2.)
Does this mean that Ron Paul is right? Does it mean the US would be best served by an isolationist posture? It does imply that the US is so preposterously pathetic in its efforts at muscular nation-building that we should abandon any future efforts in that direction. Of course, the world may not be willing to let us off so easy--and we may not be able to resist future temptations to do good.
The Geek has some thoughts on those questions. (No shock there.) Stay tuned. He will be back.
Showing posts with label Afghan Peace Talks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afghan Peace Talks. Show all posts
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
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..
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..
Saturday, October 16, 2010
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.
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.
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