Brian M Downing
The Obama administration’s review of the war in Afghanistan came and went. A precis of the review and the ensuing agenda had been leaked well beforehand and excited little interest let alone debate – public attention is elsewhere. The military presented scads of data that argued the Taliban had lost momentum and indeed was being rolled back in areas.
Accordingly, the US and many ISAF allies have committed to General Petraeus’s counterinsurgency program through 2014, after which the Afghan government and army will be charged with the effort. In the meantime, there will be several more years of counterinsurgency operations, which have thus far been far from impressive. There is good reason for skepticism about the prospects of counterinsurgency operations and the war seems headed for several more years of inconclusive fighting – in effect, a war of attrition.
The Military’s Presentation
General Petraeus’s metrics were received not simply as numbers. They came endowed with the prestige of the US military and that of the man credited with breaking the Iraqi insurgency only three years ago. The presentation convinced most civilian policy makers few of whom have a background in the military or counterinsurgency doctrine – an unfortunate state of affairs brought about by the chasm the Vietnam war created between the middle classes and military service. Demurrals were likely heard, though probably not probing questions let alone forceful opposition. General Petraeus’s position prevailed.
The assertion that the Taliban’s spread has stalled is likely true as it has been noted by independent sources such as NightWatch for several months now. But the bare statistics might be misleading. As Prime Minister Canning wryly noted almost two centuries ago, statistics can prove many things, but seldom the truth – and little has changed in the field since.
At the height of its powers, the Taliban could never control all of Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance fought them to a standstill and insurgencies emerged in several areas of nominal Taliban control. Further, the Taliban was so brutal in parts of the country that their renewed presence there will be fought vigorously. The central provinces of the Shiite Hazaras, who were killed by the tens of thousand, are a grim case in point.
The Taliban, then, may well have acquired, through tribal parleys or guerrilla campaigns, most of the territory they can hope to expand into through an insurgency. Further expansion will entail fighting in conventional formations. This was how they fought back in the nineties, but this was also how they were swiftly driven out of the country back in 2001. Conventional warfare is not the Taliban’s forte, and without that ability, their capacity to expand into the North and West is limited.
Western forces have in recent months driven insurgents out of at least three areas in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Security there has improved and markets have reopened – welcome events recalling those in the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, and to some, an augur of parallel developments in Afghanistan. But the return to sectarian conflict in Iraq over the last year calls for closer scrutiny of the bases and reliability of the surge there – and in Afghanistan as well.
The presence of western forces in previously Taliban areas has driven insurgents away, or at least under cover, but there is scant evidence that locals no longer support – or fear – the Taliban. They accept aid programs and express gratitude for irrigation ditches, schoolhouses, medical care, and the like; but such behavior is consistent with fence-sitting or even with covert support for the insurgency. Many locals remain reluctant to even speak with westerners. Others openly express their reluctance to cooperate with outsiders.
Counterinsurgency experts (such as David Kilcullen) direct our attention to more substantive indicators of changing fortunes in a counterinsurgency. Are locals volunteering intelligence that leads to arrests of insurgent leaders and interdictions of supplies? Are locals serving eagerly with local militias or simply showing up to receive a paycheck? Are ground engagements begun by insurgents or counterinsurgent forces? In other words, who has the better local knowledge and who has the initiative? Where are locals turning for settlement of disputes: government courts or Taliban courts? Heretofore the latter have been widely deemed fairer.
As reported by many recently returned military and aid personnel, these more substantive indicators of progress do not yet offer encouragement. Three critical obstacles to the counterinsurgency program remain.
Pakistani Sanctuaries
The government in Islamabad and Rawalpindi is helpful in locating militant leaders of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP) and directing US drone strikes on them, and this allows the government to proclaim its active partnership in fighting Islamist militancy. But this is only because the TTP made the foolhardy and contumacious error of attacking the Punjab in early 2009, instead of attacking western forces – as agreed upon in an earlier agreement that allowed the TTP to impose Islamic law in the Swat valley.
Pakistan, however, makes only feints against the Taliban, Hizb-i-Islami, the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda, all of which enjoy safe havens in Pakistan. They are seen as reliable allies in Pakistan’s struggle with India, constituting an obstacle to Indian influence in Afghanistan, training guerrillas for the Kashmiri insurgency, and securing a redoubt in the mountainous areas in the event of an Indian invasion.
In recent months, Pakistani intelligence (ISI) has lodged vigorous protests when US drones killed a number of figures in the Haqqani network (even though many of such drones fly from Pakistani air force bases). In response to a US incursion into Pakistan’s tribal areas, the ISI closed off the Khyber Pass through which flows a good deal of US and NATO supplies to Afghanistan. In recent days, ISI has released the identity of the CIA station chief, requiring his prompt departure.
The US is increasing the amount of supplies coming through Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan, but as long as the US relies on Pakistan for logistics, the ISI will offer sanctuary to insurgent groups. And as long as those sanctuaries exist, the strength of the insurgency will remain significant and the efficacy of the counterinsurgency will remain limited.
The Kabul Government
Reports of corruption in President Hamid Karzai’s government invites suspicion of being vastly overstated. Indeed at times it sounds like a venerable fable about an evil potentate in an exotic land. But Afghans of all tribes and backgrounds, ISAF personnel, and various aid workers consistently aver that the government is plagued by corruption from ministers in Kabul to petty officials in most districts.
Ballot boxes are stuffed throughout the land to bolster Karzai’s vote count and to exaggerate the numbers of his Pashtun people. Local officials demand exorbitant payments for basic things like shop licenses and death certificates, thereby fueling public hostility – and the insurgency.
The Karzai government’s corruption is unhappily complemented with ineptitude. Many heads of state and city bosses, in many parts of the world, have grabbed with both hands but nonetheless built governments that administered justice and provided services in a manner that won reasonable if not considerable support from below.
Karzai has done the former though not the latter. Justice is increasingly administered in Taliban courts and more services are provided by foreign armies and NGOs, which, for all their good intentions, paradoxically underscore the perception of foreign occupation – another basis of the insurgency.
Some analysts thought that the Obama administration’s 2011 withdrawal date would press Karzai to enact reforms. After all, without western forces, Karzai’s government is not long for this world – nor might he be. It might be recalled that the greatest period of reform in the short unhappy life of the South Vietnam came only when the US began to withdraw in 1969. But of course the Obama administration has all but assured Karzai four more years.
The Afghan National Army (ANA)
Building up indigenous armed forces will go far in reducing the problematic foreign presence. The Obama administration has placed great emphasis on training the ANA to take over the burden of countering the insurgency – a training mission once placed in the hands of private contractors that yielded considerable disappointment. This will be all the more important as several ISAF powers have withdrawn their forces or announced plans to do so.
The ANA, it will not be surprising to note, is plagued by corruption and ineptitude. Commissions are bought and stalwart non-Pashtun officers are being replaced by Pashtuns. This is doubly problematic in that it places officers through payment rather than through achievement and it places a Pashtun officer corps over an increasingly restive non-Pashtun majority in the rank-and-file.
Cohesion and efficacy suffer as trust in the officer corps and fellow soldiers is limited. ANA units cannot rely on the readiness or competence of other units they serve alongside. Soldiers look upon many of their NCOs and officers not as capable superiors but as privileged bounders.
The Taliban masterfully exacerbate ethnic mistrust by periodically convincing an ANA soldier to open fire on fellow soldiers before coming over to serve in an insurgent band. It is, of course, almost always a Pashtun soldier firing upon non-Pashtun and ISAF forces. Those examples must surely weigh on ANA soldiers whether on patrol or encamped on an operating base, whether alert or drowsing.
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A counterinsurgency is an effort not only to win popular support through development programs but also to attrit the insurgents through armed engagements. In the estimation of David Galula, the French officer who developed the craft during the Algerian war of independence, it is eighty percent the former, twenty percent the latter.
But if Pakistan continues to aid the insurgents, Karzai fails to build a competent government, and the ANA remains unprofessional and divided, the US and ISAF will have to rely at least as much on attriting the insurgents as on rallying the population to its side.
Future policy reviews are scheduled.
©2010 Asia Times
©2010 Brian M Downing
Brian M Downing is a national security analyst who’s written for outlets across the political spectrum. He studied at Georgetown University and the University of Chicago, and did post-graduate work at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.