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Afghanistan: The Bleeding Has Stopped, But the Patient Remains in the ICU
I am just back from a ten-day trip to the Arabian Peninsula, so expect posting to remain lighter than usual for the next few days. I want to highlight, though, the unclassified U.S. government assessment on the war in Afghanistan which the executive branch is required by law to submit to the Congress every six months. The bottom line:
The continuing decline in stability in Afghanistan, described in the last report, has leveled off in many areas over the last three months of this reporting period. While the overall trend of violence throughout the country increased over the same period a year ago, much of this can be ascribed to increased International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) activity. Polls consistently illustrate that Afghans see security as improved from a year ago. At the same time violence is sharply above the seasonal average for the previous year – an 87% increase from February 2009 to March 2010.
Translation: We have halted the Taliban's momentum. Violence is up, but we expected this to happen as we escalated our activities.
The president's December 2009 speech, we should note, explicitly called for halting the Taliban's to be the #1 goal of our military efforts. So that's good news. But for me, this report is not nearly as important as the one that will be delivered after the next Friedman Unit. The next FU will really and truly be important because a) we will be able to actually assess the full effects of the as-yet-incomplete Obama surge of troops and b) we will likely use that assessment to decide how fast and in what way we will begin to withdraw U.S. and allied units beginning in June 2011.
That having been said, if you are one of those -- and I have heard this the most from military officers -- who complains we do not have a strategy for the war, this report is instructive because it lays out, in detail, the strategy. You can then turn around and argue that the assumptions underpinning the strategy are faulty or that counterinsurgency is a poor operational choice, but you can't argue that folks have not thought about ends, ways and means.
Anyway, this report should keep you busy. It's loaded with interesting stuff, such as the fact that insurgent groups consider 2009 to have been their most successful year but that a majority of Afghans continue to blame them for the security problems in the country. (Only 1%, by contrast, blame the ANSF.)
Enjoy. (And thanks, Laura, for sending this along.)
That having been said, if
That having been said, if you are one of those -- and I have heard this the most from military officers -- who complains we do not have a strategy for the war...
The argument is not so much an absence of a strategy, as it is that we settled upon tactics first and then molded strategy to fit the tactics.
You can then turn around and argue that the assumptions underpinning the strategy are faulty or that counterinsurgency is a poor operational choice...
I think that's where we've been for quite a while now.
ISAF casualties are up 100%
ISAF casualties are up 100% this year. Kandahar City is full of Taliban. Innocent Afghans killed by NATO are up 100%. The ANP are still awful and getting worse. The ANA is better but still rubbish. The GOA is still corrupt and millions of stolen USD are being funneled out of the country daily. The big Marjah offensive has petered out with no real positive effect. The cost of the war will increase by $30-50 billion this year.
How could anyone read this as halting the Taliban's momentum? Delusional? Propaganda?
When we have several consecutive months when ISAF, ANSF and innocent Afghan casualties are down from last year come and talk.
No one's going to "come and
No one's going to "come and talk" to you Visitor. No one cares about an anonymous cynic interested only in shouting down COIN at every chance.
Sure, there is a strategy,
Sure, there is a strategy, but it follows the tactics. The entire notion that "instability" is somehow a giant problem that can only be solved by counterinsurgency is behind our current effort in Afghanistan. We actually have no concrete interests in Afghanistan. The only thing that leads you there is worrying about instability, linked in the end to the potential for terrorist attacks on the West. Counterinsurgency promises to solve instability through addressing the "basic needs" of the people. Of course, the fact that the vast majority of terrorists according to a CIA study (see today's letters in the Financial Times) actually come from backgrounds in which all of their needs have been met creates some slippage for COIN, but that is largely ignored when discussing COIN.
Our real problem is that our strategic assessment - "era of persistent conflict" - was reached in order to fit the cure of COIN. After all, when one examines what these phrases actually mean, they are simply a grab bag of type of one source of instability after another. Virtually all of these sources of instability were around before 9/11. Because COIN is trapped in the assumptions of social science it is unable to disentangle US interests from the cardinal assumptions of these disciplines. It confuses the two.
Seen from the proper perspective, of course there is no way we can lose in Afghanistan. Framing the question this way in entirely misguided. What we can do, however, is waste an incredible amount of resources in an utterly misguided enterprise.
The United States has
The United States has decided at a strategic level that a secure Afghanistan is a vital national security interest for the United States. Securing Afghanistan at the strategic level requires counterinsurgency on the operational and tactical levels. Other methods of attacking the problem will not work - we've found that out the hard way. The only solution to an insurgency is to conduct counterinsurgency operations, much as the only solution to an enemy's standing army is to conduct high-intensity conflict operations. As such the only room for debate here is whether a secure Afghanistan is a worthwhile strategy to pursue as a matter of national policy, a conclusion that has been reached by two very different administrations.
I don't feel qualified to sharpshoot Bush AND Obama on national policy, so what's the debate again? Lead, follow or get out of the way.
Mike: Excellent rebuttle.
Mike: Excellent rebuttle. When do the insults start?
I'm also glad to know that Mike bin Mike isn't an anonymous name.
Armchair: Since Taliban activity has intensified since McChrystal took over I don't see how you can come to the conclusion that the "other" methods (if indeed the previous commanders were doing anything much different but with smaller budgets) that were tried worked any worse than the present doctrine. They were certainly cheaper and in at least the short term seem less expensive in ISAF and innocent Afghan lives.
It is quite possible, even likely, that two or even three administrations would come the the same wrong conclusion- Viet Nam is the best example. Most of the messes that are the financial, criminal justice, education and welfare systems are exactly the way they are because successive administrations at federal and state level have made the same mistakes over and over.
"Seen from the proper
"Seen from the proper perspective, of course there is no way we can lose in Afghanistan."
Just watch.
Visitor: Enemy-centric
Visitor: Enemy-centric methods failed catastrophically in Iraq and earlier in Afghanistan. I'm honestly quite surprised people continue to attack population-centric counterinsurgency as it is currently practiced when every alternative has failed the test of battle - it seems to me a bit like advocating for a new Maginot Line on the Internal German Border! (pardon the analogy, but I hope you get my drift)
While administrations certainly can come to the same wrong conclusions due to institutional inertia and so on I note that your Vietnamese analogy is flawed - Nixon did not retrench on LBJ's Vietnam policy, he quickly began looking for a way out and taking concrete action to that end. Precipitous troop withdrawals began immediately! All talk of some marginal troop withdrawal predicated on security gains at some point in the murky future aside, the Obama administration has chosen to entrench Bush's Afghanistan policy and massively escalate rather than look for a way out. As I said earlier, I don't think I'm smarter than the strategic minds of two separate administrations who reached the exact same conclusions on what we should be doing in Afghanistan.
Armchair, Securing
Armchair,
Securing Afghanistan at the strategic level requires counterinsurgency on the operational and tactical levels.
Based upon what rationale? In your comments, you offered up an either-or of enemy-centric COIN and population-centric COIN. That's a false dilemma. Afghanistan can be "secured" by any means that denies the Taliban influence. That does not require waging a COIN operation to prop up a sovereign, central government. It could, for example, also be achieved by relegating the government to a rentier fiefdom in Kabul (like it was 60 years ago). Roll back the central government's claim to administration of rural communities and you have, by definition, no more insurgency, because there is no longer a struggle if the government cedes its claim. From there, rather than waging a COIN op, ally with rural communities to enable them to govern themselves (like they did 60 years ago) without Taliban influence. This may require some changes to the 2004 constitution, or simply an acknowledgment that the constitution has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. That is admittedly a tall order, politically speaking, for any western leader to accept. It's not made any easier when the defense community and their think tanks continue to hype up COIN as the only method available.
Visitor 9:51 am: "I'm also
Visitor 9:51 am:
"I'm also glad to know that Mike bin Mike isn't an anonymous name. "
Not sure where you were going with this. My point was that AM didn't come to your corner of the internet knocking down your door telling you how things really are. He posted his viewpoint on His blog. He has no obligation to come to you in the future and say "Mr. Visitor, what I predicted was (right/wrong)." But if you had really wanted him to "come and talk" to you, you should at the very least leave an email address, if not your name, so that he could.
TJM:
"Securing Afghanistan at the strategic level requires counterinsurgency on the operational and tactical levels.
Based upon what rationale? In your comments, you offered up an either-or of enemy-centric COIN and population-centric COIN. That's a false dilemma. Afghanistan can be "secured" by any means that denies the Taliban influence..."
Actually it's really not a false dilemma. Since Afghanistan is an active insurgency, any actions taken by the sovereign government and its backers to defeat it would be, by definition, counter-insurgency. In an insurgency there are the Insurgents and the General Population within which the insurgents operate. Thus, any effective operational and tactical level strategy is going to be focused on one or the other or a combination of both.
"Roll back the central government's claim to administration of rural communities and you have, by definition, no more insurgency, because there is no longer a struggle if the government cedes its claim."
End the insurgency by allowing the insurgents to take power. This is generally referred to as "defeat" in military circles.
The rest of your comment describes what those who have studied COIN would describe as a population-centric counterinsurgency.
I think it is absolutely
I think it is absolutely important to note that the three month time period, on which the report is based, is a time that has historically see drops in violence. It's the winter. Yes, this winter was more mild in Afghanistan than the past several years, AND it was still the winter. Passes still received snow. Logar province dealt with its fair share of snow. I'm sure other parts of the country did as well. You cannot base an assessment of the overall health of an insurgency based on the rhythmical and natural decline in violence that the country always sees.
I have long been a fan of PCCOIN, although I don't think it's being applied correctly in Afghanistan. I've argued this behind closed doors with good friends (some of whom frequent this site). First, basing the VAST majority of your forces inside of the few urban areas in Afghanistan, might be an effective tactic IF we were faced with an urban-based insurgency. The truth is, we're not. We're yielding control of vast parts of the country (recently the most notable examples include the majority of Nuristan and large parts of Kunar) to the Taliban and Taliban-allied forces. These forces are then able to expand their powerbase, coerce more people to supporting them, and gain a de facto legitimacy. We are legitimating the Taliban everytime we give up control of a village to them.
This is fine, if we're seeking to integrate them into the government. Of course, if we start integrating them into the government, it begs the question, "what's the point?" What's the point of a decade of war just to let them infiltrate, gain FURTHER legitimacy (internally and externally), on which they can easily resume control of the country. Now we're back to 1993......
Anyway, back to my original point: you have to take this assessment with a grain of salt. Of course violence is down. What if we leave the country during the summer and just come back in the winter? That way, we'll always be looking good!
-Andy
Andy, I don't think the
Andy, I don't think the moving out of rural areas is a permanent solution. Right now, we don't have the troop numbers (both Afghani and ISAF) to control all of that area. Helmand and Kandarhar were both almost entirely insurgent-held cities/provinces and Kandarhar is the spiritual home of the Taliban. The aim is to control these major Red areas first, then like the ink blot, spread the security throughout the rest of the country. Obama has come back with his speeches of late declaring that we're not goint to pull out in 2011 but that we have a long term commitment to Afghanistan. It sounds like he was bowing to the immediate political pressure following his rise to the Presidency when he announced we would drawdown in July '11, but that he actually now plans for this "drawdown" to be the end of surge forces a return to pre-surge troop levels for a substantial time. If, during this time period, we can get ANP and ANA properly trained up, we can begin to push security back into the rest of the country while continuing to hold the major population centers.
"You can then turn around
"You can then turn around and argue that the assumptions underpinning the strategy are faulty or that counterinsurgency is a poor operational choice, but you can't argue that folks have not thought about ends, ways and means."
Except we can. Lots of people were arguing that before the terrible Shinwari deal was adopted, about the bizarre and inexplicable obsession on opium eradication (only just recently blunted, sort of), and any number of other things. Andrew, if you've learned anything from the last year of studying this stuff it is that, despite people insisting otherwise, they really DON'T connect ends, or ways, just means.
And to Josh's point, if the
And to Josh's point, if the assumptions are wrong and COIN is a poor operational choice isn't that far more important than whether folks have thought about ends, ways and means. Clearly the ways and means aren't well thought out . . . if COIN is a poor operational choice or basic assumptions about what we are able to accomplish are incorrect.
Actually it's really not a
Actually it's really not a false dilemma. Since Afghanistan is an active insurgency, any actions taken by the sovereign government and its backers to defeat it would be, by definition, counter-insurgency.
Agree. I was not throwing out a hypothetical on how to defeat the insurgency. The original issue was about "securing Afghanistan." I was pointing out that there are more options available for the gov't to achieve this than to ally with ISAF to fight the Taliban. The gov't could cede the rural territory (thus, by definition, ending the insurgency) and stop trying to gain control of it (by definition, not waging a COIN op). The rural communities could then work directly with the US to wage a counterguerrilla war and/or the central gov't could engage in purely political activities (rather than politico-military) to establish a rapport with the rural communities.
End the insurgency by allowing the insurgents to take power. This is generally referred to as "defeat" in military circles.
Depends upon the objective sought. If the objective is ending the insurgency, then yes. If the objective is securing the country and creating a viable state government, then not necessarily.
The rest of your comment describes what those who have studied COIN would describe as a population-centric counterinsurgency.
No. If you [e]nd the insurgency by allowing the insurgents to take power, then they are no longer insurgents and there is no longer a COIN op.
Armchair: I was under the
Armchair: I was under the impression that the bits of the Iraq campaign that have worked were enemy centric- paying the enemy not to fight you and killing those who won't be bought.
Earlier in Afghanistan we were spending less, taking fewer casualties and had fewer districts with a Taliban presence.
This is hardly catastrophic when compared to today. Why do we need to protect Afghan's from the Taliban.? I thought the anti-Taliban folks were in the vast majority and were habitually armed. Haven't we provided them tons of weapons, training and cash? What is actually going on here? Is it possible that the money we're pouring in is making this worse by spurring corruption and removing the need for the Afghan educated classes from fighting?
Mike: I didn't know you were Exum's spokesman. Is it really his position he doesn't want debate just a fan club?
Visitor: Actually, last time
Visitor: Actually, last time I checked the entirety of the Iraq campaign has been a resounding success and that success can be entirely traced back to the adoption of population-centric counterinsurgency on an operational and tactical basis. Good things flow from good doctrine - your example of the Awakening movement is a security initiative that came about by, with and through the population. The concept of "security" beyond your own force protection in and of itself is alien to an enemy-centric approach because in that case you are entirely focused on taking the offensive against an "enemy".
Earlier in Afghanistan the Taliban had not reconstituted themselves as a fighting force and taken the offensive. Your implication that we have created the insurgency in Afghanistan is something of a new low for disingenuous comments - it really reminds me of the kind of circular thinking common on the left during the dark days of Iraq, and we all know how true that turned out to be.
Just to give an example of the kind of mental contortions anti-war types have gone through to avoid admitting to American victory in Iraq, literally as soon as the Coalition regained the initiative in Iraq the many Iraq War articles on Wikipedia suddenly stopped being updated. Many Iraq War articles there literally have not been updated since the middle of 2007 despite being vigorously maintained before that date by people who were quite obviously deeply opposed to the war. Amazing, right?
http://washingtonindependent.
http://washingtonindependent.com/84811/a-cia-coindinistas-misgivings-on-...
TJM: You did such a
TJM:
You did such a fantastic job of contradicting yourself that I i'll limit my response to this sentence.
Visitor:
I never claimed to represent AM's desires, nor did I suggest that people should limit their comments to pro-COIN arguments. All I did was point out that no one cares about the opinions of a person who takes arguments in circles and shouts down his opponents without actually thinking about the points they make.
My BLUF on the report: rule
My BLUF on the report:
rule of law is still broke and there is no plan or increased resources to fix it
anti-corruption is still broke
ANSF increase will require increased numbers of POMLTs and OMLTs but we can't even man the current requirements
Despite the critical role of NTM-A's ANSF force generation mission to the success of the operation, it is still hugely understaffed
ISAF is less popular than a year ago
Oh, and the ANAAC is going to increase exponentially, without a sustainment plan beyond Uncle Sam pays.
I am thinking this is not good.
Armchair: Your resounding
Armchair: Your resounding Iraqi success still has over 200 civilians killed per month, without any of the political improvements the 'surge" was supposed to bring, still with a annual bill of hundreds of billions of dollars annually and without the attitude change in Iran the whole war was designed to be a prelude to.
Perhaps you should define pop-centric coin. It seems that if something worked the Pop-Centric Cointras take credit for it so perhaps a list of things that happened that could be part of an enemy-centric as well as pop-centric campaign would be useful. I don't see how buying off Sunni guerrillas and killing Jihadists isn't enemy-centric. JAM sitting on the sidelines also has nothing to do with protecting the Shia population either- it's just lucky they realized that since they had won the elections the sooner they stopped killing Americans the sooner the US would leave.
Visitor 10:30 am: Modern
Visitor 10:30 am:
Modern insurgencies require the support of the population to succeed. Since the insurgents are weak militarily, they overcome this by choosing when and how to engage the counterinsurgent before disappearing into the safety of the general population. Often, they seek to provoke an over-reaction on the part of the counterinsurgent to further drive the population to their side. The population provides them aid in the form of cover and concealment for their operations, food, money, recruitment, and other assistance.
A population-centric COIN strategy involves taking the population into account in operations and tactics. It seeks to bring the population to the side of the counterinsurgent, cutting off the insurgent from his center of gravity and forcing him into the open where he is easier to kill. Population-centric COIN does not mean no kinetic operations and no targeting of the insurgent. To the contrary, PC-COIN seeks to kill off any insurgent that can't be swayed so the insurgency ends. It uses the population (that knows who the insurgent is) to find the insurgent so that he can be killed.
An enemy-centric COIN ignores the role that the population plays and focuses all efforts on the enemy. It does not seek to cut off the insurgent from his population base, it aims only to kill or capture the insurgent. It leaves out the asset that the population could provide to the counterinsurgent by forcing the insurgents into the open so the counterinsurgent could more easily kill them, and often its operations are counterproductive as they push the population into the hands of the insurgents who gain more recruitment and better aid.
Bringing the population to one's side, to include bringing low-level insurgents to one's side, in the fight against the insurgent is a fundamental tenet of PC-COIN operations. The Sunni Awakening and the Malayan Home Guard are examples of this. Killing jihadists is counterinsurgency either way, but PC-COIN uses the rest of the Iraqis to say "hey the insurgents are building a bomb in this house over here, come get 'em!"
As for JAM, the "ignore PC-COIN, conventional thinking is better" advocates wanted to kill Moqtada al Sadr. JAM would have continued fighting and would have stepped up violence had this happened. Instead, the PC-COIN guys won out and said "hey let's not antagonize them, let's bring them into the political process so they stop fighting."
So in an enemy centric coin
So in an enemy centric coin campaign you don't try to get intel from the civilians and you don't try to cut off the enemy from his base? Sounds like you've created a very nice straw man.
The targets of the Sunni Awakening bribery scheme were tribal leaders- hardly low level insurgents. Were the Malayan Home Guard Malays or Chinese? If Malays it's hardly an example of turning insurgents.
JAM went increasingly on the rez (except of course the police who were busy ethnically cleansing Baghdad until early 2007) after the Shia won the 2005 elections. That political victory was caused by Sistani telling the US to lose it's plans to rig the election. It had nothing to do with Cointras clever plans.
Since ISAF has killed 78% more innocent Afghans this year than at this point last year I wonder when the PC-Coin will start? Or is it just a ruse to lever more troops and cash out of the US? The personal and institutional desires of the US military would point to some sort of deception.
In nay event McChrystal has admitted the war is an even stalemate, which means, given the tendency to command optimism, things after a year of his command and significant reinforcements aren't going well. The Taliban can play for a tie- NATO can't- especially if it continues to buy the PC-COIN line with it's need for far more western troops.
Visitor, Actually, Iraq had
Visitor,
Actually, Iraq had only about twice the homicide rate of the United States (and half that of the US commonwealth of Puerto Rico and a number of developed countries) as-of 2009. This year's numbers are likely significantly lower. Take a look at Wikipedia.
Iraq recently conducted free and fair elections which have resulted in messy but largely peaceful coalition-building. Considering that the rhetoric between factions that were recently murdering each other in the streets seems to be less heated than that heard in DC I'd say the political success people have been looking for has been there all along.
The creation of the Awakening militias, the dismantling of AQI and the defeat of JAM all came about through population-centric methods, working by, with and through the local population and government to provide security, expand legitimate governance and strengthen the rule of law. As a result of these activities insurgents are either forced to once again submit to the lawful government or flushed into the open and defeated.
Counterinsurgency is really more properly a form of operational art than a tactic (as it is commonly said to be) - obviously you combine "hard" and "soft" tactics to achieve your ends. In fact, it says quite clearly in FM 3-24 that it is a manual for high-level staff doing campaign planning rather than a book of TTPs for the ground-pounders. Lethal targeting of irreconcilable insurgents is obviously going to feature in a population-centric campaign, but while we're focused on the operators kicking down the door and shooting the bad guys people often forget that the context in which it takes place matters. It's disingenuous to insist otherwise.
Now, if you'd been paying attention to the actual news from the battlefield instead of the absurdly negative and amateurish analysis bandied about by the media here in the west, I'm sure you'd be agreeing with myself and Mike bin Mike here. Unfortunately it's hard to reach agreement when you don't agree on the facts at hand.
In addition to everything AW
In addition to everything AW said:
How does a paycheck for employment equate to bribery? When the state of Virginia pays its police officers their salaries, do we call these bribes? The Sunnis involved in the Awakening manned checkpoints 24/7 providing security to an area, is that not something worthy of payment for services rendered? Payments were initially made to the tribal leaders to be distributed to everyone employed, but soonafter we moved to a system were each guard was payed their salary directly by Americans.
The Home Guard were Malayan Chinese, the ethnic group that the MCP insurgents were part of, they did not come from the larger Malay ethnicity, so it was in fact, a good example.
Your comment about JAM is a cop-out. The police conducting ethnic-cleansing were members of JAM. Deaths from ethnic violence continued to escalate month-by-month all throughout 2006 until they spiked in December before dropping off two months later (coincidentally at the exact time that Petraeus began to implement his strategy). They were More active in 2006 than in 2005.
Forgot to address this: "So
Forgot to address this:
"So in an enemy centric coin campaign you don't try to get intel from the civilians and you don't try to cut off the enemy from his base? Sounds like you've created a very nice straw man. "
No, they do Try, but they're more often than not unsuccessful. As I tried to emphasize, they don't take the role played by the population into account. They don't try to understand why the population supports the insurgency and they make no efforts to gain their support. When the population is complicitly (or actively) supporting the insurgency, asking "hey where are the bad guys?" receives shrugging shoulders or an indignant glare in return.
They try to cut off the enemy from what they perceive as his base, but they only look at parts of the insurgent organization itself (e.g. financiers, weapons suppliers, etc.) without taking into account the population or seeking to use it to their gains. This is why we call it enemy-centric as opposed to population-centric. I'm not creating straw-men; you're failing to understand the positions on either side of the argument.
You didn't just compare the
You didn't just compare the Virgina State Police to Baathist guerrillas did you? Paying Sunni insurgents to protect their own areas from themselves and to stop trying to kill you is a bribe.
Could you give reference for the ethnic composition of the Malay Home Guard? The only thing I've found states although the intent was ethnic balance it was hard to get anyone but Malays to join. In any event the home guard members weren't former communist guerrillas so comparisons to the Sunni Awakening are false.
How's that gaining the support of the population working in Afghanistan? I saw a recent poll where in every key district ISAF is not supported by a majority of the people. Perhaps the CT folks are just being realistic at the chances of armed foreigners actually gaining the support of the locals.
PC COIN sounds good as a theory. It certainly sounds more progressive and less bloody than punitive strikes etc. It would probably work in your own country- as the government removes the grievances of the disaffected group political violence violence should be reduced but it's track record in a foreign country is very bad because nationalism, cultural misunderstanding and xenophobia trump good intentions and the sad fact that the host government wouldn't need support if it was worth supporting. Even 3-24 acknowledges this.
Armchair: WRT murder rates- please compare the rates of political murders. The failure of the war on drugs and it's high attendant murder rates in the US has nothing to do with the failure of the COIN campaign in Iraq to get the number of politically motivated killings to an acceptable level.
Does JAM know it was defeated or was it convinced by Sistani that the political battle was won and to conserve it's strength for later? It seems that the PC Coin thesis assumes far more influence among the various forces in Iraq than it should. The enemy get a say and could follow the debate in the US. I think the crucial event was the rejection of a US style election by Sistani. Once it was clear that the Shia parties would rule there was no reason for JAM et al to keep fighting the coalition and every reason for the Sunni Nationalists to get a ceasefire that paid so they could save their strength for when the US leaves. I get the impression that the local leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan are often seen as simpletons to be manipulated rather than cunning survivors who are far more experienced in conflict than the ISAF people.
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