Negotiate with the Taliban?

I would disagree with Johnson that Afghanistan is sure to fail. The Afghan government has a lot of weaknesses but so does the Taliban. They are very fractured, have little ability for coherent action, but above all have very little appeal politically. They have failed to develop a good narrative. There claims to be fighting for Islam are undermined by there reliance on poppy as their most important cash source. The have some legitimacy fighting the foreign invader but we have done a good job of ensuring the Afghans government is everywhere we are.

That being said, our odds of success there are less than Iraq for the reasons you highlighted. Afghanistan is simply a very tough nut to crack. What Obama has done is hedged his bets. He has the right people in place, now we'll see if upping the resources available will accomplish anything.

I think the stories recently making a big deal about negotiating with Taliban miss the point and are dangerous. Getting members of the insurgency to defect or stop fighting rather than killing them has always been a part of any counter-insurgency strategy. Most of the Taliban, as with any insurgency, fight for situational reasons and it is possible to turn them. However, because they fight for situational reasons, you have to change those situational factors before you can accomplish anything. That means providing better security, effective political enfranchisement, economic development, and governance development. They won't switch sides if you simply talk to them.

Negotiating with the leaders of the Taliban, the hardcore minority, will accomplish nothing. Just ask the Pakistanis who have struck deal after the deal with the Taliban in Pakistan only to have fighting break out again and again. All they have accomplished is strengthening the grip of the hardcore minority over the rest of the insurgency. By sitting down and negotiating with them as equals, they have appeared weak and enhanced the prestige and respect due to the hardcore minority.

The Death of Initiative

This article from the NY Times is an informative read from a Army officer whose experience in Afghanistan was marked by the dismal effects the ever-growing military bureaucracy has on initiative in combat operations. Essentially, this captain argues that many opportunities to capture or kill key AAF leaders were lost because of the numerous levels of red taped that must be fought before the actual fight ever begins. By the time approval was gained for the operations, the target had long departed. Consequently, the local populace and Afghan forces were frustrated at the military’s lack of action on convenient targets.

I would guess that the origin of this bureaucratic nonsense (aside from being typical of any large governmental organization) is in another tenant of counterinsurgency: minimize civilian casualties. But in this quest (which I am by no means denigrating) to avoid civilian casualties, the level of approval for combat operations had climbed higher and higher, to the point where initiative is completely squelched. The ever-increasing technology available to commanders further allows micromanagement of troops on the ground, a mishandling of an asset intended to enable initiative.

Many a counterinsurgency expert (such as Kilcullen in his “28 Articles”) has emphasized the importance of initiative at the company level and below. This should not be a new concept to anyone even remotely familiar with COIN. But the military has forgotten to balance the avoidance of civilian casualties with encouraging initiative in lower level commanders. Pursuing extreme measures in support of one counterinsurgency guideline (ie. avoid civilian casualties) will not create success if it is only at the expense of other COIN lessons learned.

The discussion up until now is only scratching the surface of what is a deeper – and more complex – problem. Clearly, Commanders at BCT, DIV and above believe that BN and CO level commanders are not fit to make these types of decisions. Why is that? Is it the “fog of war”? The additional knowledge that is available at the TOC (Rivet Joint feed, UAS Feed etc) but not to those on the ground? Is the education level of CO Commanders simply incomplete?

If this cumbersome decision making process is not streamlined and decision making returned to BN and CO levels, the benefits available from the recently-announced troop increases may be limited at best.

Look back at McNamara and Vietnam

McNamara's death brings to the forefront the legacy our involvement in Vietnam. The issue is especially relevant considering the debate over what we should do in Afghanistan today. Check out this Washington Post oped.

There has been a lot written about the mistakes we made in Vietnam. Those don't need to be rehashed here, but it is heartening to note how different the debate is. Talking to people who were alive then, they note that there was much less knowledge and debate about potential strategies for dealing with the situation. All of the debate was about whether we should stay or not. Today, there is a lot of constructive debate about Afghanistan and ways to deal with it.

The other important thing to consider about McNamara's legacy is his later stated belief that the war was unwinnable but he still continued to send troops there. I could never accept anyone doing something like that. You are putting other men and women in harms way because of a lack of political courage.

The same issue arises for Afghanistan. The Administrations plan for dealing with it is-on the whole-nothing too new but it is a good plan and gives me courage that the administration believes they can succeed and is sending us there for good reason. I have heard some talk of reducing our objective in Afghanistan to more just kill capture to take out senior Al-Qaeda leadership so that there can be some plausible success. It would be a huge mistake to do so, because it would not solve the problem and would only strengthen the hardcore Islamic militant leadership of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This solution is mostly political in my mind, and would be akin to McNamara's sending soldiers to Vietnam even when he knew the war was unwinnable for political reasons. For me, if I am standing in front of my men in a year explaining to them why I am dragging them across the world away from their loved one to possibly die, I want to have confidence it is for the right reasons.

New Blog - Check it Out

I discovered this blog on lessons learned in Afghanistan (it is not affiliated with CALL). I haven't read as much as I would like, but it seemed like something that y'all would enjoy.

How broad based is the Taliban

I have been tracking the debate about what we should do in Afghanistan recently. There are very strong arguments that the conflict is intractable and unwinnable. Obama’s NSC team seemed to come to that conclusion. I recently had a e-mail exchange with George Friedman, the founder of Stratfor who had come to the same conclusion. On the other side of the debate, some have been arguing for a shift in strategy focused on building local governance. A recent article in Small Wars Journal laid out that strategy very well. Following that path will require time and patience, given the amount of resources we are able to commit, and is certainly not worth following without a significant hope of success. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it is a very complex issue and this is my only post for the month.

The central issue in the debate in my view is the extent to which the Taliban has a broad base of support. It will be next to impossible to build local governance if the Taliban have a strong base in an area because once we empower the locals and arm them they will simply subvert us and work with the Taliban. That happened in Iraq to some extent because we empowered the Iraqis without addressing the fundamental political issues driving the conflict and as a result the security forces in many areas subverted our actions by aiding the insurgency or degenerating into sectarian death squads.

The argument of those who think Afghanistan is intractable can be summed up by what George Friedman said in an e-mail to me:

“Remember, they won the civil war in the 1990s against all comers. There was a reason for that, and that was because they really did have support. I am not comfortable with the assessments on Taliban support I hear, because they rarely take into account why such a marginal group should have won the civil war.”

From various readings, I get the impression that Afghani politics are in large part driven by personalities than by an actual coherent structure. The only level where any kind of structures exist is at the most basic community level where individuals live in close proximity and know one another. Anything above that and coalitions tend to be driven by a personalities such as Massoud, Doustum, or one of the other warlords. Thus, relations between these factions will be anarchic, only mildly influenced by ideology or ethnicity, and based on impulsive personal gain. Leaders are constantly striving for heroic status, power, glory, and revenge. They accomplish this by aligning with power and taking what they want when they want it.

The Taliban presented an immense departure from this form of politics when it first emerged because it imposed a rigid system of laws and represented something other than just the people in it. Its foot soldiers felt they were fighting for something rather than just for a person. Afghans I have talked to reminisce about the Taliban because even if it was brutal, it brought stability. It represented something cohesive rather than arbitrary. You might get shot or your hand chopped off because you violated some consistent rule rather than arbitrarily, as would happen under rule from a warlord.

That gave it a tremendous amount of strength during the anarchic civil war. Because Afghan politics is mostly ego driven, once the Taliban gained a certain amount of momentum, there were mass defections to its side. The various personal Afghan factions and groups realized that their interests were best served by siding with these new powerful forces that brought with them a completely different political structure. The Taliban succeeded in taking much of Afghanistan as a result.

The subsequent American success can almost be described in the same terms. The Americans came with Special Operations Forces soldiers and air power, and after a small amount of momentum, the various factions realized their interests were best served by siding with the new powerful force and their were mass defections and a huge swing in momentum. There were parts of the Taliban that melted away in order to start a guerilla war, but these elements were only a small fraction. They were unable to influence events initially because of their lack in strength.

The parallel between the American success and Taliban success demonstrates that the fundamental nature of Afghan national politics has not changed significantly. Communal feelings only existed at a very low level and not at the national level. The Taliban never succeeded in creating a strong political base. The politics in Afghanistan remained driven by opportunism and personality rather than any belief in the national system the Taliban created.

The resurgence in the insurgency has occurred recently because the Karzai government has proven itself ineffectual. There is widespread corruption and cynicism amongst Afghans about its ability to govern and retain power. The national police pushed out from Kabul are often corrupt and ineffectual. As a result, Afghans have started to lend support to the Taliban primarily out of opportunism. They view the Karzai government as ineffectual and the Taliban as more likely to win. The foreign invaders will one day leave just as every foreign invader has.

Recent polling data in Afghanistan supports this view. Data from the polls shows that Afghans are losing confidence in the Karzai government. When queried about whom they would like to see running Afghanistan, however, only 4% said they would like to see the Taliban back in power. Admittedly, the polling data is probably flawed since the pollsters would not have access to areas were Taliban support was greatest, but the dearth of support for the Taliban in still significant.

Since the Taliban does not have a broad base, a strategy of building governance from the bottom up should prove effective. That kind of counter-insurgent strategy attacks the political situation at the only level where any kind of communal feeling exists. Thus, it is the only way to fundamentally alter the Afghan political landscape.

Using Local Power structures

I am reading an excellent paper written by a foreign service officer about how to be a good adviser in the Islamic world. It is available here.

There was one story in particular that illustrated one of our key mistakes that we have only now reversed in Afghanistan.

“An American Commander in Afghanistan made an unannounced visit to a remote district of Heart Province. They traveled in a large convoy of more than 20 vehicles filled with well-armed American and Afghan soldiers, about 100 in all as a display meant to cow the district officials. The district administrator was summoned to appear before the colonel and subjected to a long public speech by the American about the necessity of collecting all the weapons held by the district residents. The Afghan administrator waited until the colonel was finished, and then said simply: “There are more than 200 villages in this district, and every house has a weapon. We have almost no police enforcement here. If you promise me that every time a village family has a problem you will come immediately from the capital to solve it, I will happily collect all the weapons. But Colonel, come unarmed and not with all these soldiers. You shouldn’t tell us to get rid of all our weapons unless you are brave enough to come alone and unarmed to talk about it.”

The most evident lesson from this story is the importance of providing local security to the population. It is clear the district officials did not trust the central government and the Americans to provide him with security and so their policy was doomed.

However, the more important question this raises is whether or not to work with local power structures or supplant them. By taking away weapons from the people, the Americans were trying to strengthen the hand of the central government and increase it's ability to rule its people. Central government as a power structure has never really existed in Afghanistan in a constructive way. Instead, power tends to be held at the local level.

I think that rather than trying to supplant these local power structures, we should try and coopt them to our cause. It is naive to think we can turn into Afghanistan into a country like the US. Victory there means reducing violence to culturally acceptable levels and it will probably never have a very effective central government. So, rather than exclusively building the central government, forming local militias to help fight the Taliban is the best method. We have only just started to do so. Progress will be slow and there are some downsides, but the strategy represents the best hope for Afghanistan.

Dispersion of Troops: Is the Army too Risk Adverse?

The Atlantic has been running some great pieces lately. The most recent discusses the continued problems in Afghanistan and the dispersion of troops - or lack thereof - throughout the country. To summarize the problem:

Large numbers of U.S. and NATO troops are now heavily concentrated in Kabul, Kandahar, and other major cities. Thousands of U.S. personnel are stationed at Bagram Air Force Base, for instance, which is complete with Burger King, Dairy Queen, and a shopping center, but is hundreds of miles from the heart of the insurgency. Meanwhile, the military’s contact with villagers in remote areas where the Taliban operate is rare, typically brief, and almost always limited to daylight hours.

The article goes on to recommend that the U.S. and NATO build compounds throughout the problematic districts of the country and emplace small numbers of troops there. The tactic of dispersing forces through out the host country allows Soldiers to get to know the culture better so that they can work within - not against - it, gain better intel from interactions with the people, and most importantly, provide security for the people. As the article points out, the people are not predisposed towards the Taliban, but they will not assist America at the risk of having a family member killed or losing their livelihood. This is 101 level COIN tactics and it begs the question, when any historical or theoretical work on COIN would list dispersing the troops to live among the population as a key part to fighting an insurgency, why has the U.S. not adopted this approach?

There are probably many reasonable answers to this question. Dispersion would be logistically difficult, there are a troops from a variety of different countries and they all do not agree on the appropriate steps to take in this situation, the list goes on. But I would argue that the most important contributing factor to the reticence for a widespread dispersion of troops is that the Army has become too risk adverse and is unwilling to take the risks that may be necessary for success in an insurgency.

I was not in the Army in the 1990's so I have little experience with the pre-9/11 Army (for that matter, I have little experience with the post-9/11 Army) but from what I have read and been told, the Army became highly risk adverse in the 1990's, especially after the Somalia debacle. Combined with the success of the first Gulf War, in which few lives were lost, and the Powell Doctrine which sought to continue in that mold, the Army began to increasingly deny it's ability to face risky situations.

For example, look at the historical measures of success in combat: During World Wars I and II, one of the most important measures of success was defined in land gained. With this goal as the backdrop, Soldiers and their leaders went into combat with the knowledge that some, even many of them, depending on the campaign, would not return. There were a variety of measures of success in Vietnam, and the criticism thereof could be another post, but one thing remains the same, there existed the knowledge that Soldiers would be killed. But how do many of today's leaders, especially at the company level and below define mission success? For many, it is returning from deployment without any WIA or KIA. A valid goal, no doubt, but will that goal produce success in an insurgency?

Upon this (oversimplified) background, the Army finds itself facing an insurgency. There are many paradoxes in fighting an insurgency, one of them being that you must face great short term risks in order to pursue long terms gains. Living in a super-FOB with an McDonald's within walking distance will prevent American Soldiers from getting killed. But at what cost? In the long term, will the risk adverse mindset result in a net loss if the situation in Afghanistan steadily grows worse, if combat operations are required for years? Ultimately, it may be better to accept the short terms risks, and better disperse troops throughout Afghanistan, than to continue in a half-hearted - but safer - solution that will only leave the Army facing the same problems for the foreseeable future.