In his report to the Pentagon and the President of 30 August General McChrystal advocates the need for a change of strategy. He recommends that NATO adopt a counter-insurgency strategy and that the United States provide an additional 30 to 40,000 troops. This article will examine what a counter insurgency strategy will entail and some critique of the strategy.
McChrystal’s report and the Army’s new counterinsurgency doctrine require convincing the local population to support a legitimate government and stop support for the insurgents. Mao originally argued that the insurgent must swim in the sea with the population. Denying local support to the insurgents will occur when the people believe that the government and its outside supporters (such as NATO) are completely committed to their security and well being and will have patience and persevere until the people are secure. If the people have any doubt about this commitment, they will not cooperate with anyone because they know that if they miscalculate, they risk being killed by the insurgents. This, of course is the major source of power for the insurgents, as detailed in an earlier article.
Afghanistan is not a unified nation. It is a nation of tribes and tribal loyalty which trumps national loyalty. The Taliban have a loose command structure that functions on regional and local levels based upon tribes. The Taliban’s unifying factor is it desire to expel foreigners. These tribal and ethnic splits explain why Afghan security forces are frequently targeted in attacks. The Afghan tourist website shows that the chief ethnic groups/tribes, are the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras.
Towns & Ethnic Majority
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Town
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Approximate Population
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Dominating Ethnic Group
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Kabul
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1,500,000
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Pashtuns
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Kandahar
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225,500
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Pashtuns
|
|
Herat
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177,300
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Tajiks
|
|
Mazar e Sharif
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130,600
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Tajiks
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|
Andkhui
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Uzbeks
|
|
|
Kunduz
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Tajiks
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Ethnic Groups Population Ratio
Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%
Each of these tribes has their own ways of living and distinct loyalties. Therefore, one would expect that rather than seeking loyalty to the central government that the first effort would be to gain tribal support for security by empowering the tribal leadership and making it part of the solution, not the problem. However, General McChrystal’s report does not even contain the word “tribe”.
By focusing on tribes in prioritized areas and charging the forces assigned to the area to secure the villages according to the priorities of the tribal leadership one can start the security effort and expand it in cooperation with the tribal leadership. This would also allow a focus on the Taliban splinter groups in priority.
In Vietnam, at one point, the US sought to implement what was called an “ink blot” strategy. The idea was that expanding ink blots would eventually overlap and security would spread throughout the populated parts of the country. Coupled with this was the arming of local popular forces, whose mission was to secure their own village. The Marines, as explained in Expendable Warriors, formed Combined Action Program (CAP) platoons. They stationed a Marine squad with the Popular Force platoons to train them, fight with them and call for fires and reinforcements provided by units in the area, if required. The program was barely supported by the Marine Corps, but was successful. A similar program that focuses on prioritized geographic tribal based security plans and forces could have an ink blot effect. When coupled with economic and social improvement the strategy would result in the Taliban being denied a source of new recruits, Mao’s sea would progressively become unfriendly and stability at the local level would increase.
An increase in local security would eventually result in national stability and give an opportunity for nation building. This is what the counter insurgency strategy might look like.
What do you think our strategy should be?
Comments
As we have just seen, trying to build a democracy in our own image in Afghanistan through elections will not work. We should not be focusing on democracy but effectiveness. There are very few democracies in the third world but there are some effective governments, like Singapore. We need the imagination to think beyond our culture bound proclivities toward elections and democracy to doing whatever it takes to get an effective government in place. Even if he is a dictator what we need is someone who can take control and make things work. People like that are not easy to find. Lee Kuan Yew is still an excetion that proves the rule but I think that may be our only hope. It does not look like Karzai is that person so we should start looking elsewhere, and soon, I would think.
I agree with you that the absence in McChrystal's report of any mention of the importance of the tribes in Afghanistan and how they must be included in any successful counter insurgency strategy is a significant omission.
Your memories of the Regional Popular Force (RufPufs) also brought back memories since I was in a helicopter near Tay Ningh in 1969 that crash landed at a RufPuf outpost after probably being shot down by a 50 caliber machine gun at that same outpost.
The counterinsurgency strategy should have been well in place once the first stage of the campaign were completed. To a singular point, this has been accomplished in Iraq, though the majority of IED's I feel are based not for religious reasons, but for criminal ones. The history of Afghanistan is based on clan and valley warfare, which cannot be defeated by military force alone. Political tact, diplomacy, "Heart and Minds" Programs would serve us well now!
I think General McCrystal suffers from the same problem many of our military leaders have encountered. As stated by Barbara Tuchman, "...it was a failure to understand that problems and conflicts exist among other peoples that are not soluble by the application of American force or American techniques or even American goodwill. 'Nation-building' was the most presumptuous of the illusions. Settlers of the North American continent had built a nation from Plymouth Rock to Valley Forge to the fulfilled frontier, yet failed to learn from their success that elsewhere, too, only the inhabitants can make the process work."
i Basically agree with RichMc461. To quote a FSO counterpart, George Kennan testified about the VN War: "There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions and stubborn pursuite of extravagant or unpromising objectives...Our country should not be asked , and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country, and particularly not in one remote from our shores, from our culture and experience of our people . This is not only not our business but I don't think we can do it succesfully." Good morning Viet Nam, Afghanistan....This from a father of a Marine Major who has served three combat tours in five years (including serious--Purple Heart injury in Iraq) and a recent year in Afghanistan. Stop the nonsense---more boots on the ground will not "win the war on terror" any more than our efforts to win the drug war or the war on poverty have seen success
In this article I argued for small village protection forces based upon the CAP program from Vietnam. I made a critical unstated assumption: The Taliban would not be able to mass large numbers of forces undetected by allied intelligence. The attacks of this weekend call this assumption into question. The ability to mass several hundred fighters and to attack a police station and remote outpost suggests either that the Taliban can mass more quickly than I assumed or that our intelligence collection in this case was lax.
The Taliban most likely are trying to secure their lines of communications for the winter and US forces should pursue the attackers to deny said.
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