Escalation and appraisal in Afghanistan
By Brian Downing
The recent campaign in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan, is the first
phase of a far-reaching counterinsurgency program. Western and Afghan troops
will clear Taliban fighters from villages and later whole districts, then begin
a seemingly simple but actually arduous process of building local military and
intelligence forces and delivering medical, construction and veterinary
services to the villages.
The process is to be repeated in other parts of the country, mainly the south
and east. Many think the difficult program will require still more troops.
Although the counterinsurgency program calls for Afghan military and government
personnel to play substantial roles, especially
once the Taliban are driven out, this is unlikely. The Afghan army and state
are not yet coherent, reliable institutions; both are corrupt and divided along
ethnic lines. Neither will be able to perform a substantial role in the
counterinsurgency in the near future.
This means much of the program in Helmand is to be carried out by United States
and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) personnel, and this will present
difficulty when it comes time to allocate forces to expand the
counterinsurgency program into other provinces. The Taliban will exacerbate
personnel shortcomings in the counterinsurgency program by interdicting
supplies, attacking small outposts and assassinating locals deemed
collaborators. Recent trends suggest that improvised explosive devices and
suicide bombers will be the weapons of choice.
The demands of the Helmand campaign, the Taliban response and plans to extend
the counterinsurgency into Kandahar, Paktia, Kunar, and other provinces in the
south and east will put pressure on the Pentagon to call for more troops.
Resonant as though these calls may be on American sensibilities to the dynamics
of a previous guerrilla war, they will have forceful arguments behind them -
perhaps strong enough to prevent a reappraisal of the strategic justifications
for the war, however appropriate that might be.
First, advocates of a deepening commitment will point to events in Iraq, where
counterinsurgency doctrines and a troop surge are thought to have led to the
volte-face of many Sunni insurgents. Whatever the effect of counterinsurgency
was there, it has attained a talismanic quality in the public and among
political and military elites. The US, they believe, now has the tools to
defeat insurgencies.
Second, advocates will argue that more troops will be essential to consolidate
the hard-fought gains in Helmand and build upon them in other provinces.
Arguments will be phrased to convey that not sending more troops means that so
many had died in vain, along with other emotional pleas that have historically
found support in the public.
Finally, personnel to carry out a surge in Afghanistan might not be as
difficult to find as thought. The status of forces agreement governing American
forces in Iraq calls for all US troops to be out by the end of 2011. This will
allow many if not most of the 130,000 troops presently there to be sent to
Afghanistan over the next two years (possibly to replace some flagging NATO
commitments), without presenting the strains on manpower that the Pentagon has
been facing over the last few years.
Helmand as test case, not phase one
The counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan is based on elaborate plans drawn
up by hundreds of officials in Kabul, Tampa, Langley and the Pentagon. The
ongoing Helmand campaign is the first phase of that elaborate program. The
military almost certainly sees the campaign as well planned and bound to
succeed. Confidence is an essential part of military culture.
The Helmand Campaign might be more usefully looked upon, not as a first phase
of a larger counterinsurgency program, but as a test case of the program's
likelihood of success. Militaries, governments and publics alike might ask: are
there viable indigenous military and intelligence forces in place? Are the
Afghan state and military becoming more professional and effective? Are the
tribes of Helmand shifting support to the Kabul government? Are the Taliban
forces losing fighters, especially from local part-timers? Are districts
becoming more secure? Unless reliable, positive answers are found to these
questions, troop increases might simply be raising the stakes in a losing
effort.
But who will assess the success or failure of operations in Helmand? Inasmuch
as the US army seems to have principal control over the counterinsurgency
program, it will likely be the judge. Reports will come up from junior and
field-grade officers out in the villages and districts, to be assessed by
higher-ups. This presents problems as bureaucracies are not reliable judges of
their own programs. Reports reaching the Pentagon on the viability of the South
Vietnamese army (ARVN) were quite optimistic about the professionalism,
cohesion and efficacy of ARVN units. But anyone familiar with operations in
Laos and elsewhere would know that outside a few units, the ARVN was plagued by
widespread corruption, poor leadership and dubious efficacy.
Few US officers will report to their superiors that their program is not
working. If they did, even fewer colonels would send the reports upstream,
unredacted. Non-military bureaus such as the Central Intelligence Agency and
State Department will play important roles in the counterinsurgency and
assessing its merits, but they too are subject to institutional pressures.
There will likely be formidable pressure to stay the course and deploy more US
troops to support the effort. The American public is generally supportive of
the war, which it sees as more worthwhile and defensible than the war in Iraq.
Support for the war will likely weaken as casualties mount with the new
operations, but the deep recession is focusing a great deal of attention on
domestic matters and since the end of conscription, few Americans know anyone
in the military.
A survey of senior figures on the administration's foreign policy team will not
reveal many with deep knowledge of world affairs, military matters or Central
Asia. Most are politicians from a political party that, fairly or not, is
vulnerable to charges of being "weak on defense", which many fear could
escalate into "who lost Afghanistan?" Few of them will have the experience or
fortitude to press for disengagement.
A notable exception is US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates - a holdover from
the previous administration whose views on the country's over-reliance on the
military in foreign policy and the Pentagon's fixation on big-ticket weapon
systems have been troubling to some but encouraging to others.
He has recently noted that public support for the war will begin to wane in
about a year and that signs of progress are essential to sustain war support -
a statement that might reflect his unease with the war, and perhaps the
president's as well. Gates will be critical in assessing the war and in
pressing a case within the administration for expanding or reducing the effort.
Events in Helmand will be key.
Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military
history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and
The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to
Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.
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