Over the past year or so, U.S. military commanders in eastern Afghanistan opted to abandon their efforts to pacify a variety of remote mountain valleys such as Korengal, Pech, and others. The high costs of maintaining outposts in these valleys were deemed to exceed the strategic importance of the terrain. In addition, commanders concluded that local populations who resisted so fiercely were effectively neutral in the conflict between the coalition and the Taliban. They figured that conceding the valleys back to local control would not necessarily mean turning the terrain over to the Taliban or al Qaeda since it was assumed that many of these locals would equally resist the presence of the coalition's adversaries.
According to the Wall Street Journal, that assumption is not coming to pass:
Over the past six to eight months, al Qaeda has begun setting up training camps, hideouts and operations bases in the remote mountains along Afghanistan's northeastern border with Pakistan, some U.S., Afghan and Taliban officials say. The stepped-up infiltration followed a U.S. pullback from large swatches of the region starting 18 months ago. The areas were deemed strategically irrelevant and left to Afghanistan's uneven security forces, and in some parts, abandoned entirely.
American commanders have argued that the U.S. military presence in the remote valleys was the main reason why locals joined the Taliban. Once American soldiers left, they predicted, the Taliban would go, too. Instead, the Taliban have stayed put, a senior U.S. military officer said, and "al Qaeda is coming back."
Such re-infiltration is a direct affront to the Obama administration's goal "to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and to prevent their return to either Afghanistan or Pakistan."
The U.S. command in Afghanistan has been well aware of the problem. Last September, a large U.S. air strike on the Korengal valley blasted a budding al Qaeda training camp, killing dozens of Arab fighters, two senior al Qaeda leaders, and one of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted al Qaeda militants. Termed "mowing the grass," such air strikes and direct action raids would seem to be an acceptance of periodic "Bidenesque" counterterrorism suppression instead of a hoped-for permanent pacification through counterinsurgency.
The U.S. surge strategy in Afghanistan hopes to achieve two goals. First, it hopes to buy time to permit a buildup of Afghan security forces so that they can maintain security in the country. Even if this hope is achieved in Afghanistan's urban areas, the Afghan government's imminent control and pacification of places like the Korengal and Pech valleys is not in anyone's imagination. Second, U.S. policymakers hope the surge will create negotiating leverage over the Taliban, leading to a political settlement. Such a settlement would undoubtedly include a ceasefire which would favor Taliban and al Qaeda re-infiltration into ungoverned spaces like the Korengal and Pech valleys.
Meanwhile political upheaval in Yemen and elsewhere in the Arab world is disrupting previous U.S. counterterrorism programs and relationships. U.S. policymakers may have to rethink assumptions they may have held concerning the cooperation they expect to receive from local governments.
The basic U.S. strategy for countering al Qaeda has been to build up indigenous security forces to govern previously ungoverned spaces. This is a very long-term project which in the meantime has resulted in many "no-go" areas. Even when it had its own significant ground combat power at its disposal, U.S. military commanders have found it too costly to impose their will in some wild areas, such as some mountain valleys in eastern Afghanistan. In other places like Yemen and possibly Egypt, the U.S. government may end up losing the counterterrorism relationships it previously had with local officials. The result will be the reopening of sanctuaries for al Qaeda and a setback for the current U.S. strategy. The fallback plan will be periodic Bidenesque "lawn mowing." But this alternative is likely to be insufficient and will create its own problems. Policymakers will soon be scrambling for a new counterterrorism strategy.
Comments
Robert C. Jones:
I guess I don't understand insurgency very well as you state in your post on April 16 at 1527, 'cause I surely don't understand why in 9 paragraphs about the conflict in Afghanistan there is no mention of the Pak Army/ISI and their role. I also don't understand why in one post you say the Taliban has the support of the populace which would lead me to believe that they represented that populace but in another post you say they don't represent a specific constituency of the populace but rather emerged. Another thing I don't understand is the Taliban knocking off scores and scores of elders when they move into an area, on both sides of the Durand line. How do I reconcile this with emerging and support and the Karzai gov being nasty fellows?
I try to understand but the best I can do with the word emerged is that something emerged from Mullah Omar's desire to run the joint again. I don't see much room for compromise in that desire. He is the only one in the room who wrapped himself in the cloak of the prophet.
You might call his a desire to make "MO, AQ, ISI, friends and family-istan" rise again.
I keep trying to learn, but the bus that will take me on my journey to knowledge keeps getting stuck in the mud of the things I mentioned above.
Charles,
You ask great questions. For the soldier on the ground, often the 50M picture is simply Shoot-move-communicate. This operation will not be won or lost at the soldier level; that will happen at the policy/strategy level. Our tactics are largely fine, it is our operational design, the overall strategy, and the policies they support that must make the break from the colonial, controlling perspectives that they are based upon.
As to your readings; I recommend reading the writings of insurgents as well. Mao's Guerrilla Warfare with intro by Sam Griffith is a classic. But read others as well. Recognize that like our COIN readings all are biased and from a certain perspective, but it provides a balance. Read about the background history that led to the development of the US Declaration of independence and our Constitution. Read Maslow and Einstein. Read Robin Hood. Read Stephen Covey. Read about the history of the design and implementation of the US Cold War Containment Strategy. Read about the history of our Colonial era of the late 1890s to WWII. Insurgency and COIN are all about human dynamics and the political relationship between the governed and those who govern. Get a law dictionary and read the definition of "master and servant" law. Government is the servant in that relationship, look where insurgencies dominate and one finds government as master, or government answering to some external master. Challenge clichés from COIN on things like control of the populace (no, it is control of the government that is lacking), or sanctuary (support of a populace far more than any "space"). One must become multi-discipline in their approach. Read about the US civil rights movements, or the movements that led to the collapse of the Soviets in Eastern Europe.
We've made COIN a simple little box of thinking. COIN actually is fairly simple, but it is a simple understanding of complex human dynamics. We've made it a simple matter of exerting external and internal governmental control, and that is not COIN.
Bob
Mr. Jones,
You say that one must step outside of our doctrine and Western COIN writings in order to more fully understand insurgency. Are you asserting that we must look at other writings/doctrines, or open our eyes and step outside of the box when we're the boots on the ground? Or, is it both?
The multitude and diversity of questions I field from my students on a daily basis are getting harder to answer - the more reading I do regarding insurgency and the intermingling of MCO, COIN, HIC, and "Assymetric Threats" into our training POIs - the more muddied the waters appear.
Excellent point about many Afghans not distinguishing us from the Russians - something lost in our conversations about dealing with the locals.
As for the reconciliation issue...I'm clueless. I'm a "move, shoot, and communicate" type. I'd like to be dialed into the proper mindsets and bigger picture thoughts in order to "fight tactically, think strategically", but these are difficult answers that have thus far eluded me.
If I were the POTUS, I'd have two questions and one constraint for my top advisors: We are in Afghanistan and we are not leaving until we win this thing. How do we define winning? What's the strategy for making that happen?
@ Robert C. Jones:
I know you know this, but Pashtunistan crosses over into Pakistan. And everything you wrote about Afghanistan is applicable to Pakistan.
I hope as NATO builds an army for Afghanistan, we remember that we've done nation building and army building in South/Southwest Asia before. The name of that nation build via IMF and World Bank loans and military aid? Pakistan.
Am I going way too far with that analogy? Yeah. Still, it's interesting to think about it in that way.
<blockquote>Later, during the 1950s, the Pakistan Army received large amounts of economic and military aid from the United States and Great Britain after signing two mutual defense treaties, the Baghdad Pact, which led to the formation of the Central Treaty Organization, and the South East Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) in 1954. This aid greatly expanded the Army from its modest beginnings.</blockquote>
And this large army, to this day, controls the country from behind the scenes, trains proxies that wreak havoc in the region, hold themselves out as hired muscle for the Americans and Saudis and Chinese, and receive intellectual cover from a generation of Cold War era American military officials who purport to "understand" and explain why such a predatory and imperially-minded military is needed in the region.
- Wikipedia (I know, I know, wikipedia! Let it go : ) )
Carl,
Brother, NO ONE represents the Pashtuns. They are by and large self-governed across their homeland. You miss the point of this insurgency. It is not that the Taliban "represent" in any western sense, some specific constituency of the populace, but rather that they emerge from a segment of the populace that is completely excluded from full economic and political participation in the new state of Afghanistan that we helped form by the very government and constitution that we helped form as well.
It may as well be called "Northern Alliance-and Karzai's-friends-and-family-istan."
You focus on the wrong thing. Insurgency is not caused by the insurgent; insurgency is caused by the government. The Taliban certainly have their rogues and self-serving members among them. Does anyone care to stand up and make the argument that this is not true of GIRoA as well???
No, I think not. It is not that I want one party to win and exclude the other; Northern Alliance or Taliban. Currently we are perpetuating the cycle of "win-lose" politics in Afghanistan; though made much worse as we enabled an absolute criminal abortion of a Constitution to be ratified that turned traditional patronage into a Ponzi scheme where all patronage above the village is vested in Mr. Karzai. We set out to "fix" Afghanistan and didn't have a clue what we were dealing with, and were manipulated by the Northern Alliance to enable and then protect their scam.
The reconciliation that must occur for stability to break out is not of any man or organization, but rather of the issues that drive the Taliban to revolt. This is not rocket science, nor is it military science. It is social science and political science. We sent the wrong team in to lead the effort.
As to the bulk of the insurgency in Afghanistan proper?? It is a resistance to our very presence. These people by and large have never heard of "9/11" and many believe us to be Russians. Most of our development efforts enrich the Northern Alliance and her affiliates and makes the disparity for those outside the circle of trust even worse.
We are being played, and we do not understand insurgency because we apply a model derived from Colonial experience; and we will never understand who is who and what is what in this country to a degree necessary for us to manipulate and shape things as we want them; instead it is we who are manipulated and shaped. Sad.
True COIN is fairly simple. But that is up to GIRoA to do, and they will never do so so long as we protect them. Smart FID is simple too, but we turned it into a military operation, labeled it a war, and set out to defeat threats and bribe populaces. That is not good FID. Good FID is largely diplomatic, and is about guarding our interests by influencing governments to support their entire populace even when their own culture and personal greed instinct is to exploit them.
Carl, I do not expect you to agree with me, but I stand by my position. I do not believe you understand insurgency very well. I know I learn more every day. It is a journey, but one must leave the confines of military doctrine and western COIN writings in that journey or one will only get a fraction of the picture.
Cheers.
Bob
Robert C. Jones:
Your ideas seem to rest upon the belief that Taliban & company actually represent the Pashtuns; if anybody can be said to represent them, they seem to be a disparate group. I think it questionable that they represent the Pashtuns. The polling data, such as it is, from the area has been pretty consistent over the years, Taliban & company are disliked, though they may be seen as the better of two bads in some places. Second, whenever Taliban & company move into a place, the first thing they do is bump off people of influence, lots of them, who disagree with them.
All these things indicate to me that Taliban & company are just more warlords, better led, buttressed by a powerful ideology, and in part because of that ideology, powerfully supported and given refuge by the most powerful nation contiguous to Afghanistan. They come to power mostly by the gun, and they stay in power mostly by the gun. They are smart enough to take advantage of local grievances but without the gun and the external support they would be nowhere. They are another group of warlords interested in power for themselves.
Our problem is neither capacity nor intelligence, though certainly we will never have enough of either to implement the current approach to the mission of disrupting and defeating AQ.
Our problem is much more one of understanding the nature of the problem, and then better focusing operations based on that understanding, than it is capacity.
AQ draws its true sanctuary from the Taliban and the populace that supports the taliban. That was true prior to 9/11 and it is still true today. Neither the Afghan nor the Pakistan governments will ever be able to "defeat" this threat while it posesses that sanctuary. High end Western SOF CT will never be able to fully defeat the threat within that santuary either. GIRoA can only address the sanctuary issue through reconciliation, and they will never do so so long as we protect them from the consequences of their biased, exclusionary form of governance.
So, our current problem is that we are focused on defeating the one organization that can actually help us acheive our stated objective. Not very smart. Any political solution in Afghanistan that is designed to exclude this portion of the populace (such as is codified under their current constitution) is doomed to failure and fuels the revolution. Any military solution under that same political structure is similarly doomed to fail.
The US and the rest of the Coalition must make a bold shift from forming, supporting and protecting GIRoA to one of engaging both the Northern Alliance and the Taliban to bring them to the table to form a workable compromise. The Quid Pro Quo to the Taliban for implementing this shift must be the surrender of AQ.
Small development projects should stop immediately, along with the "hamburger hill-like" clearing operations of the past couple of years; as both are most likely only to produce temporary suppression effects on the activities of the insurgency in localized areas, while actually increasing overall support to the resistance insurgency at the same time by our very presence and actions.
Large projects (which USAID rightfully prefers) should be put on hold as well, until such time as the reconciliation process has moved forward to the point where a new Constitutional Loya Jirga has been held to supplant the current poisonous document with one designed to reinforce trust and compliance in this no-trust environment, and include all Afghans in the future of this troubled land.
Bob
Curios this. The article, the commentary and not one word about the Pak Army/ISI and their role. Not one. If that is characteristic of the thinking of the policymakers, I say yes, it is time to come up with a new strategy, or tactic, or approach, or course of action, or whatever. Maybe this time they will acknowledge the sun shining in the sky. Nah. That ain't gonna happen. Some very important people inside the beltway would have to admit they been had by some people in Pindi and have been for years. But I can hope.
Also the article states Taliban & company remain firmly wedded to AQ, despite all the trouble that has caused them over the last 10 years. My opinion is that is because of strong ideological ties that transcend realpolitik. (Cue Mr. Jones)
I dont know Robert, with the commitment of most of the combat forces into static, area security positions, via combat outposts in populated areas, it may very well mean a lack of military capacity to go in after them. After all if every combat battalion is assigned battle space and area security missions, what is left in terms of operational reserve to go into these places in force?
gian
Robert,
What struck me in the WSJ article was the closing paragraph and I quote: "We do not have an intelligence problem. We have a capacity problem. We generally know the places they are, how they are operating," said the senior U.S. military official, speaking of al Qaeda. The problem "is our ability to get there and do something."
Many outsiders would question that assumption or belief that there is not an intelligence problem.
Elsewhere on SWJ Blog is a recent report on a battalion sized raid on a Taliban-controlled valley untouched IIRC for ten years and the worst fire fight they'd encountered. Makes one wonder that it is a problem of intelligence and capacity.