My perspective is that of a stability operations policy wonk and pre-deployment training leader. I've been working and thinking about conflict and stability since the early 1990s when I was at OSD and as a Director on the NSC Staff. Bosnia and Kosovo were the conflicts du jour and though these are worlds apart from Afghanistan, many of the challenges, shortcomings, and frustrations we face today were just as plainly visible then.
About five years ago, I started working extensively with the military on Iraq and Afghanistan pre-deployment training. My company provides the field experts, curriculum, and training to the military on what is essentially "smart power" -- the interagency/PRT/whole of government tools in the Iraq and Afghan tool kit. We also support the training of PRT civilians. My company has extensive field experience in Afghanistan although I do not. With another trip under my belt, I can pretend to be as smart as my trainers!
Let's see if I can remember what I learned on my last visit. That trip focused on meetings in Kabul and RC-East in the last days of GEN McKiernan's command of ISAF. The first Obama strategy review was still underway.
My overall impression in Spring 2009 was not positive. I couldn't perceive a coherent and well resourced COIN strategy. The soldiers of TF Duke were capably taking on insurgent forces around the AO and military dominated PRTs were building things (roads and microhydro were particularly popular), but none of it seemed informed by a political strategy. I didn't get clear answers on why we were engaged in major fighting in the Korengal Valley (the Korengalis aren't Taliban or al Queda... They just like foreigners to stay out of their valley). Nor could the PRTs effectively explain a political strategy or effects behind most of their projects — how they contributed to stability. It was as if everyone was too busy and too tired with the daily work of fighting and building to actually think about why they were doing it. Meanwhile, the universal opinion of the Karzai regime was one of a corrupt political poor man's Machiavelli with too little interest in taking on the tough challenges to lift Afghanistan out of conflict and criminality. My hope was that the Obama team and a new commander would recognize both the strategic and operational shortcomings in Afghanistan, devise a more politically incisive approach, and resource it appropriately.
As I head back to Afghanistan, I hope to see some positive impact from the additional resources and political focus the Obama team has put into Afghanistan. I will also be checking out different regions, visiting both RC-South and RC-Southwest. There have been some significant developments. GEN McCrystal brought more troops and a renewed emphasis on COIN to the fight before he got Rolling Stoned. Now the deity of COIN himself, GEN Petraeus is leading the COIN fight. State and USAID have stepped up a bit, sending in hundreds more civilians to expand the interagency presence. Further strategy reviews and initiatives should have further sharpened the mission.
Some key questions as I see them:
(1) Should our mission be counterinsurgency or something less? What are the US interests and objectives? Are we winning (particularly in Helmand and Kandahar)?
(2) Are we effective --- both in interagency cooperation/structures and in understanding COIN activities?
(3) Who will win the elections -- when the results are finally in - and what will it mean?
(4) What is the current view of the Karzai government?
SWJ Editors' Note: Nick Dowling is a small wars policy wonk with experience in OSD, the NSC Staff, NDU, and the contracting sector. He has worked on stability operations for 16 years, most prominently on Bosnia and Kosovo as a Clinton Administration appointee and Iraq and Afghanistan as a DoD contractor. He is currently President of IDS International, a leader in interagency and "soft power" types of support to the US military. He is a graduate of Harvard, got his masters at Georgetown, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.