Tribal Engagement Workshop (Bumped)

Tribal engagement in Afghanistan is an increasingly hot topic among U.S. Government,

academia, the think tank community and the blogosphere.  Articles, blog posts

and papers on tribal engagement written by authors with recent experience in Afghanistan

collectively ignited a heated debate on the efficacy of pursuing this kind of sub-national

strategy -- a debate that many in the national security community are watching closely. 

With this in mind, Small Wars Foundation hosted a two-day

Tribal Engagement Workshop

(TEW) focused on Afghanistan from March 24-25, 2010 in Fredericksburg, VA. 

The TEW was cosponsored by Small Wars Foundation,

the U.S. Joint Forces Command

Joint Irregular Warfare Center, the U.S. Marine Corps

Center for Irregular Warfare, the

U.S. Army / U.S. Marine Corps

Counterinsurgency Center, and

Noetic. The workshop was

designed to address conceptual issues associated with tribal engagement and explore

the considerations that operators and planners would have to address in order to

implement a tribal or local engagement program.

The

TEW Summary Report is available now.  We are working to organize and present

additional material via the TEW

Event Page. In the interim, there is a good amount of background information

there now.

The workshop was made possible in the first place through the vision, support

and engagement of Noetic.  Small Wars Foundation extends its sincere thanks

to Ben Fitzgerald and team.  The co-sponsors (Noetic, JIWC, CIW, and COIN Center)

all brought interest, expertise, and a variety of critical capabilities and support

to the table; their decisive engagement along with a diverse and expert group of

participants made the event a success.  We would especially like to express

our gratitude to our speakers, facilitators, and analysis team:  (list

of bios)

• Dr. David Kilcullen,

  Caerus Associates

• Mr. Ben Fitzgerald,

  Noetic Group

• MAJ Jim Gant, SF, AFPAK Hands
• Mr. William McCallister
• Col T.X. Hammes,

  Institute for National Security Studies

• Dr. Seth Jones,

  RAND

• Dr. Amin Tarzi,

  Marine Corps University

• LCOL John Malevich, Canadian Forces,

  US Army and USMC COIN

  Center

• Ms. Kathleen McInnis,

  Caerus Associates

• Mr. Mark Vinson, Institute for Defense

  Analysis

• Mr. John Caldwell, Institute for Defense

  Analysis

• Mr. Andrew Exum, CNAS
• Mr. Jason Fritz,

  Noetic Group

As more outputs from the event become available, they will be posted on the

TEW Event Page.