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Tribal Engagement for Afghanistan?
Spurred on by this paper (.pdf), the gang at Small Wars Journal ran a great workshop a few weeks back examining whether or not tribal engagement would work as a strategy for Afghanistan. (I moderated one of the discussion groups.) The participants in the workshop included scholars, intelligence analysts, and military officers -- including a lot of Special Forces officers. The verdict?
- Tribal engagement is appropriate in some locales, but needs to be considered as one component of a broader community or local engagement approach in order to reflect the wide variety of local social and power structures across the country.
- Community engagement must be accompanied by reinvigorated efforts to link the national with district and village level governments – in essence , a “top-down, bottom-up” strategy must be employed or the international community risks further balkanization of Afghanistan.
- The focal point for the engagement must be at the district level where, constitutionally, the interface between GIRoA and the Afghan population occurs.
- Government legitimacy, accountability and transparency must be improved at the district level, either through actually conducting district elections or by holding local community jirgas to appoint district representatives. Without this legitimacy Afghan communities will have little to no desire to reach out and interface with their local leadership.
Translation? Most of the attendees agreed an "engagement" strategy was necessary in Afghanistan, but almost all of the participants had in mind something very different from what Jim Gant argued for in his influential paper. (And in fact rejected his approach more or less explicitly -- something that surprised me.) Most of the participants favored, instead, a kind of "community engagement" strategy. Anyway, you can read the full workshop report for yourself and access other media here. The report itself is short and worth a read, and Ben Fitzgerald's band of Aussie ninjas at Noetic Group get the kudos for putting it together.
Ahem, there is at least ONE
Ahem, there is at least ONE American ninja.
True, true...
True, true...If you can say, how did Jim
If you can say, how did Jim Gant respond to the difference in strategy? Or has his own thinking and reflections evolved?
Mr. Exum, Here's an
Mr. Exum,
Here's an interesting take on the Civil War and terrorism:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/04/11/martin.confederate.extremist/index...
What does "community
What does "community engagement" or "tribal engagement" mean? Methinks it is one of those buzz words that everybody throws around that mean nothing, or change their meaning so often as to obfuscate the debate. I understand the need for brevity, but still. The cynic in me basically translates "tribal engagement" as bribery, pay to behave. That's never insured long term stability in Afghanistan. I understand tribes are needed as a counterbalance to the Taliban, and the Taliban is partially a result of the breakdown of tribal society, but still you'll never create a viable state on such a footing. You will ensure an essentially parasitic relationship between tribe and state, and if the state is weak, foreign dollars not flowing, then the tribes revert to form. History has shown that the only way to deal with "tribes" is basically to put them down brutally, disperse them.
I think that the US is at crosshairs on what to do in Afghanistan. They want to create a viable state, but they want effective partners in the fight against the Taliban. People realize Afghanistan is not Sweden, but then they use that as an excuse to overlook, or encourage behavior like warlord immunity and arming of tribal militias that will only kill the state in the long run. As a libertarian it kind of sickens me to say this, but the state has to be the only sheriff in town to be viable. The state, and the state alone, needs to have the monopoly on violence. The minute you give up that monopoly, the battle is already lost. Insofar as encouraging legitimacy and dealing with corruption, good luck with that. Karzai will throw a hissy fit if you openly suggest anything is rotten in Denmark.
Interesting conference and
Interesting conference and report. I was wondering why there were no panelists who were Afghanistan or central asia experts/anthropologists . It seems that the Human Terrain Team report (My Cousin's Enemy is My Friend) pretty much cuts exactly against what Maj Gant's report stated, so I'm glad to hear most participants rejected his approach. Was there any additional input from civilian area experts? If not, it seems that this is a major gap. I know it is one that the intelligence community has struggled with - inviting and examining open source material and getting input from civilian area experts. If the situation in Afghanistan is as complex and variant as the TeW's report suggests, it would seem important to talk to people who have specialized in the region outside of a military context. I suspect that as adaptable a group as COIN advocates would be open to such an idea.
Is there any actual
Is there any actual empirical evidence on when tribal engagement strategies work or don't work, whether cross-national or looking at one country over time? I've been trying to think of decent work that isn't of the anecdotal variety (not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm thinking of something more systematic).
Scott: I think you have your
Scott:
I think you have your next NSF proposal.
Regards
ADTS
1. That there was a major
1. That there was a major difference in the majority of the participants and the views of MAJ Gant does not surprise me as that was reflected in the long series of blogs in SWJ on the subject of his article----probably broke along the lines of Big Army/Human Terrain personnel vs SOF. Heck now even Gen. VANE of TRADOC is preaching that Big Army can do FID to SF levels based on Big Army's Iraq experiences.
2. There has been a very well documented successful civilian irregular defense program led under SF in Vietnam called the CIDG program.
3. Most current HTT Afghan reports read like a university level MA/PhD thesis with little or no assistance on the understanding of guerrila warfare and or how to fight a guerrilla war from the village perspective.
4. Most HTTs and BCT Cmdrs need to read the following book:
"Silence Was a Weapon-The Vietnam War In The Villages" by Stuart A. Herrington
Visitor, if you think
Visitor, if you think current HTT reports are MA or PhD-level work, then I'm curious where you went to school.
"It seems that the Human
"It seems that the Human Terrain Team report (My Cousin's Enemy is My Friend) "
I still don't understand why this report is viewed as such a revelation. Barth was writing about this sort of thing 40 years ago, and others before him. It's called Segmentary lineage societies. This isn't academic esoteric knowledge either, ten minutes with wikipedia would do the trick. As with Gant's "It's the tribes", it shows that there is little or no institutional memory regarding cultural topics. Is this because of turnover rates or because of the classic US model of focusing more on skills and methodologies than on regional specific knowledge? Not a rhetorical question, I don't know.
That there was a major
That there was a major difference in the majority of the participants and the views of MAJ Gant does not surprise me as that was reflected in the long series of blogs in SWJ on the subject of his article----probably broke along the lines of Big Army/Human Terrain personnel vs SOF. Heck now even Gen. VANE of TRADOC is preaching that Big Army can do FID to SF levels based on Big Army's Iraq experiences.
It's not just GEN Vane -- it's the entire institutional Army. The service is building a concept for the delivery of security force assistance (SFA, which is in many ways indistinguishable from FID, particularly in the way the Army constructs it) by brigade combat teams. It may be a bad idea (and I think the particular concept the Army has developed has got a lot of problems), but it's the way things are moving.
This is grasping at straws.
This is grasping at straws. The entire country is one gigantic criminal enterprise of extortion, theft, kick-backs, mandatory nepotism, bureaucratic incompetence and graft. The strategic problem is that the entire war is a colossal scam designed to keep substantial US forces tied down in the region so the US taxpayer can continue to be fleeced. The perpetrators of this fraud are both Afghan and US citizens- pols, businessmen, generals and think tank denizens.
Talking about better ways to do COIN only enables the waste to continue. The US tactical problem is that it's sent mall cops to deal with the Sopranos. The "Afghan " experts generally know only enough to be dangerous and the general knowledge of US gov employees, mil and civ, is usually laughable.
This campaign may be among the least cost-effective military operations in history. We should grow up and realize that the Afghans are not something to experiment with, that we can't change them, and that we should leave them to sort themselves out.
Visitor, I don't think most
Visitor, I don't think most people really believe the HTT report was groundbreaking. It was not unique research. It was pretty much a lit review on the topic of social structures in Afghanistan. So, it was very helpful and I think vital to a proper understanding of the circumstances of Afghanistan, but certainly not MA or PhD level research (as Mr. Foust said). I think part of the problem with this conference and the ongoing discussions on this issue is that the PhDs seem relegated to the background. The background reading for the conference covered some of the academic work on Afghanistan, but I feel that it deserves a bigger voice in the discussion.
I'm going to pile on with
I'm going to pile on with Gulliver on that comment. When AM says "almost all" he really meant everyone but MAJ Gant and likely a couple of people who just didn't pipe up. It was overwhelming, which really shocked me.
As to the Big Army vs. SOF, there was little to no disagreement on community engagement. Both sides saw the process in the same light and both groups felt that they could both do the mission. Provided that they had the right enablers. SOF guys were the first to admit that while they're specifically trained to do these missions, not every one of them is suited for the job. Same-same for the GPFs. Like everything else, it's putting the right guy in the right job.
Any number of comments here
Any number of comments here tend to overlook the core issue---how does one ensure villages and their villagers do have a chance to "speak" for themselves.
The population centric focus would dictate than even villages have to be protected espeically those villages that are located in the various lines of communications that the Taliban use to attack the larger cities from.
So what is the best method to secure villages and villagers?---the MAJ Gant version or the Big Army SFA version as it appears that where there is little or no ISAF ground personnel to conduct systematic visits of more than once per month to a village the Taliban rein supreme.
The ability to break the silence of the villagers is the key to this guerrilla fight as Stuart Harrington in his book "Silence Was A Weapon-The Vietnam War In The Villages" so often mentions.
Tales coming from the ocassion US patrol meetings with the seldom visited villages (some as well in the South) remind me of many US Army patrols going through VN villages asking the following question "Did the VietCong come through you village last night?"---what villager in their right minds would answer that question then and now?
I am amazed that the Big Army shift to SFA or actually FID will defeat a true guerrilla war using techniques learned in Iraq which cannot be applied to Afghanistan--really think the shift to SFA is a way to garner funding in the coming years as funding overall will turn down after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Is it not strange that as Big Army is making the shift to SFA/FID they are at the same time complaining bitterly that no one can do FSOs? Trying to be everything to everbody never really works out well.
really think the shift to
really think the shift to SFA is a way to garner funding in the coming years as funding overall will turn down after Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ding ding ding ding ding!
Yes, but isn't the nat. Gov.
Yes, but isn't the nat. Gov. poison well. That would make Gant's strategy the viable one.
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Tribal engagement
Tribal engagement afghanistan.. Awful :)
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If the situation in
If the situation in Afghanistan is as complex and variant as the TeW's report suggests, it would seem important to talk to people who have specialized in the region outside of a military context
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I think community engagement
I think community engagement is necessary to make the conditions better in Afghanistan. But also have a elections at the district level will also help to manage the conditions and infrastructure in a better way. I guess Afghanistan needs a election and needs to be converted into a democratic country.
Regards
Robin Sins
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