want to discuss what IS, like it or not, going to happen in the Stan, they simply want to rail against it. Whenever there is a thread about what the President will do, and what the mission of the troops he is deploying is, it always devolves into angry protest posts, accusations that if one wants to discuss it, one "must be" a rightwing warmonger or what-have-you, and the discussion sort of peters out. It's difficult to discuss the issue on this forum for that reason.
Thomas Ricks has no small amount of meat for those bones:
http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/category/topic/afghanistanLotsa data amd articles here:
http://www.nps.edu/programs/ccs/index.htmlThis interview with an Afghan country expert who is a professor at NPGS, the Q and A, is basically a discussion of what's wrong and what the plan is gonna be:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/160439
....If you have smaller numbers of troops in compounds throughout the country, how do you protect them? How do you make sure their bases don't get overrun by the Taliban?
The Taliban up to this point have not, with one exception, shown that they have the capability of overrunning an international force of the size I'm suggesting at the district level. What I talk about is about 75 ISAF personnel complemented by 50 Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police and that's complemented by an additional 25 to 45 civilian development specialists—everything from hydrologists to agro-economists and the like … In most of the districts where the Taliban are operating, they're not roaming around in groups of 500 or even groups of 50. We're talking about tens.
And what would be the main mission of the troops at this local level? Is it to provide security for the Afghans who aren't getting it from the central government?
South of the Helmand River, where the Pashtun homeland really is, there's been very little reconstruction. So first of all, these district teams will be able to pursue reconstruction and development programs but not at the whims of Kabul … You would be basically building and enhancing the types of things the people themselves are suggesting are needed. This would help to solidify the traditional Pashtun social structure that's had a very sophisticated conflict-mechanism strategy over the years, that's been basically destroyed since 1979 when the Soviets invaded. I argue that what we really want to do is to rebuild this social structure that's been very good at resolving and moderating conflicts and the like. The next thing is that, you know, there's a symbiotic relationship between security and reconstruction. You can't have one without the other, especially in this campaign. We being at the village level would also offer village elders security. We're insulating them against the insurgents, the Taliban. And I think it would eventually drive the Taliban out of these areas, much the way it's been done in some of the urban areas in Iraq through the inkblot strategy.
Now if you're empowering the clans—the tribes—at that level, don't you risk undermining President Karzai's bid to strengthen the central government?
One should recognize that Kabul has always been rather symbolic. The national government has never mattered that much to the rural Pashtun hinterland. Afghanistan has never had a strong government such as the present constitution calls for except for a guy named Abdul Rahman, or the Iron Emir, in the late 19th century. And he was a very strong and decisive figure who actually built towers of skulls from his opponents. One of the complaints I heard time and time again is that Karzai doesn't have a lot of respect in many areas because he's a weak president … So the point is that national governments have never been strong in Afghan history and have never had that great of an influence in the hinterland area anyway. These areas have their own governance, tribal governance, they have their own laws, tribal laws and they never looked very favorably on things coming from Kabul. In fact, historically, when Kabul has tried to exert its influence in the Pashtun hinterland it's usually caused insurrection or insurgency.
Some of this sounds familiar from General Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. Are you talking about replicating the model in Afghanistan?
Afghanistan and Iraq are really very, very different. Iraq has traditionally had literacy rates of well above 90 percent of the population, Afghanistan you might have 15 percent of the population. Iraq is basically an urban society with some very major urban centers that have driven the traditional intellectual and social and economic life of the country. Afghanistan is 80 percent rural. The cities have never mattered that much. A rural insurgency is very, very different than an urban insurgency, which we're facing in Iraq, and you have to pursue different policies. Plus, in Iraq you've had a very dynamic pattern of sectarian violence between the Sunni and Shia. And while there are differences between the Afghan Sunni and Shia, it's never been one of the driving historical epics in the country.
Go back to the comparison to the Soviet occupation. The conventional narrative roughly is that the Soviets had a strong hold over the government until the U.S. started supplying the mujahedin with shoulder-fired rockets that brought down their helicopters and that led to the undoing of the Soviet occupation. You're saying their strategy from the start was, like ours, an urban strategy, and that's what led to their failure?
Absolutely. And if you look at and analyze the mujahedin presence during the Soviet occupation, they controlled 80 percent of the country, the rural areas. The Soviets controlled the urban areas. And like the present conflict, the conflict during the Soviet area was a rural insurgency. And while they would go into the villages temporarily, and in fact the Soviets followed policies that bordered on genocide which of course we're not doing, they still were never able to insulate the villagers from the mujahedin, just like we can't insulate the villagers from the Taliban.
Which is precisely what counterinsurgency doctrine calls for.
Right. Classic. Absolutely.
....
Of course, another way to gain the cooperation of tribal warlords is to give them Viagra. I wish I were kidding, I'm not!! It makes them feel like young lions!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/25/AR2008122500931.html
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